The artificially intelligent entrepreneur: ChatGPT, prompt engineering, and entrepreneurial rhetoric creation

To better understand the role of artificial intelligence in the development of entrepreneurial rhetoric, we examine how generative language models such as ChatGPT serve as viable tools for content creation. Using an established framework for examining CEO celebrity (Creator, Transformer, Rebel, and Savior), we illustrate how such models can effectively produce and refine elevator pitches, social media pitches, and crowdfunding pitches commonly used in the study of entrepreneurial rhetoric. We demonstrate ChatGPT's ability to mimic each celebrity CEO archetype by prompting language in the style of exemplars, including Elon Musk, Indra Nooyi, Tony Hsieh, and Lisa Su. Implications of prompt engineering—the fine-tuning of inputs fed into language models to produce precise output—for entrepreneurship research and practice are discussed. We conclude by advancing the idea that the emergent and enduring value of generative models is, at its core, dependent on effective prompt engineering.