How to Create a Custom GPT

Key takeaways

A custom GPT is an AI model that you can tailor to perform specialized tasks, improving the accuracy of responses for unique contexts. Here are some important things to know:

• In the first two months following OpenAI’s custom GPT feature’s release in 2024, users created over 3 million custom GPTs [1].

• Creating a custom GPT involves providing detailed instructions in the form of prompts to the GPT builder and training the model using high-quality, context-relevant data.

• You can build a custom GPT for specialized applications in several industries, like financial forecasting or responding to patient inquiries.

Discover how to build a custom GPT for specific tasks, and learn more about how you can apply customizable GPTs in various industries, how to craft effective prompts for your GPT, and key skills and careers in this area. If you’re ready to start learning, enroll in the Google AI Essentials Specialization. You’ll have the opportunity to learn about essential AI areas like large language models, generative AI, and prompt engineering in as little as four hours. 

What is a custom GPT?

A custom GPT is a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) model that you can modify to suit your specific requirements by utilizing its natural language processing capabilities. Customizing a GPT model is a no-code process that involves writing detailed instructions known as prompts to guide the GPT’s function and training it on domain or context-specific data sets. 

Customizable GPTs differ from ChatGPT in that they not only leverage ChatGPT’s base model and data but also have their own knowledge base for solving targeted, industry-specific problems. Thanks to this flexibility, custom GPTs can provide more accurate and relevant answers to queries, making them ideal for use in areas that require deep contextual understanding, like health care and finance.

OpenAI introduced customizable GPTs in November 2023, and by January 2024, users had already created over 3 million custom GPTs [1]. To organize all the available GPTs, OpenAI launched the GPT Store, where you can find all the customized GPTs created by both users and OpenAI’s partners for specific purposes, from video generation to writing and research. 

Read more: What Is ChatGPT? How It Works, How to Use It, and More

What does it mean to create a custom GPT?

Creating a custom GPT means taking ChatGPT’s base model, which is trained on general data, and adding your customized instructions and task-specific data to obtain more accurate answers. You’ll provide documents and files containing in-depth information related to your task or domain, as well as detailed instructions in the form of prompts to guide how the GPT will use this data to respond to your queries.

Real ways people are using custom GPTs

On the GPT Store, you’ll find several types of customized GPTs that you can apply for various tasks, from content generation to data analysis. OpenAI, its partner companies, and community members have created these custom GPTs. Some examples of GPTs in the store that you can use for real-world purposes include:

• The Pythoneer: Helps users learn to program in Python

• Books: Provides personalized reading recommendations

• Data Analyst: Helps visualize and analyze user-provided data 

• Song Maker: Provides songwriting advice and helps generate lyrics and tracks

• Creative Writing Coach: Provides feedback to help you improve your writing skills

In addition to the GPTs available on the GPT Store, you can create your own custom GPT for your specific use case or industry application. Check out some real ways you can use custom GPTs in specific industries:

• Health care: You can train your custom GPT on medical research papers, electronic health records, or medical guidelines and regulations to help with patient inquiries about symptoms, clinical record management, and medical literature summarization.

• Information technology (IT): You can train your GPT model on incident reports, troubleshooting guides, and resolved IT tickets to help manage incidents, act as a help desk assistant, or generate articles for your knowledge base.

• Legal: By using legal documents, case law, and legal proceedings as your training data, you can use a custom GPT to provide case-specific recommendations, analyze contracts, and generate summaries of legal research. 

• Finance: A custom GPT trained on historical market data, financial transactions, and regulatory frameworks can help with financial forecasting, portfolio analysis, and compliance checks.

• Customer support: You can train your custom GPT on data related to common customer problems and FAQs to respond to queries with the most relevant resources and reduce support ticket load on human agents. 

• Marketing: By training a custom GPT on customer feedback, purchasing or browsing behaviors, and product catalogs, you can use it to provide personalized product recommendations to users, identify optimal marketing strategies, and qualify leads. 

What to know before creating your own GPT

The first thing you’ll need to know before building a custom GPT is what task or problem you want your GPT to solve. For example, your goal may be to automate customer support or summarize research articles. Identify your target users and what type of results you expect from your model. Having a clear idea of your GPT’s purpose will help you customize and fine-tune your GPT according to your desired output. 

You’ll also want to identify your custom GPT chatbot’s tone and style of responses. Determine whether your model will give more detailed or less detailed responses to different inputs, as well as set thresholds for the scope of responses your GPT can produce.

The most important prerequisite to building your own GPT is deciding on and collecting appropriate, high-quality data to inform your model. Make sure you provide clean, highly relevant documents as your training data. The data should cover diverse scenarios, include examples, and be specific to your industry or task, ensuring your GPT can provide accurate responses to different types of input.

Create your own custom GPT in ChatGPT

Creating a customized GPT on ChatGPT is relatively simple: start a chat with ChatGPT, provide instructions and data specific to your application or industry, and then define the GPT’s function, whether you want it to create text or images, search the web, or analyze data, for example. Learn more about the process of creating a custom GPT in ChatGPT:

1. Log in to OpenAI. 

Head over to https://chatgpt.com/gpts and log in to your OpenAI account. Once you’ve logged in, click on the “+ Create” button at the top right of your screen.

2. Open the GPT creation tool.

Clicking on the “+ Create” option will take you to the GPT builder interface. Here, you’ll find two tabs, Create and Configure. The Create tab allows you to chat with the GPT builder and provide specific instructions and documents, while the Configure tab allows you to customize your GPT’s name, appearance, and functions. 

3. Create your GPT.

In the Create tab, add specific, detailed prompts to guide the creation process. For example, you can write “Make a software engineer who can help review my code.” The GPT builder chatbot will respond to your prompt by asking further questions about the logo and purpose of your GPT. You can also add any documents or files here that contain your training data.

4. Customize your GPT.

In the Configure tab, provide a unique name for your GPT and a description of the GPT’s purpose. You can also customize your GPT’s appearance if you’re integrating it with a specific platform or app, and configure specific settings for your GPT, which include:

• Images: You can ask the chatbot to create an image or upload your own image as the logo for your custom GPT.

• Instructions: You’ll need to provide in-depth instructions on how your GPT will function and any behaviors it should avoid.

• Prompt starters: These are prompt ideas to help you write an effective prompt.

• Knowledge: Upload any extra documents to supplement your GPT’s knowledge base and enrich its output.

• Capabilities: You can specify additional functionalities for your GPT, such as Web Search or Code Interpreter.

• Custom Actions: You can integrate pre-built plug-ins and third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) with your GPT by specifying the parameters, endpoints, and how you want your GPT to use them.

5. Test your GPT.

Preview and test your GPT’s performance in the Preview pane. You can behave as a user and interact with your current model to see how accurately or appropriately it generates responses. If you’re not satisfied with the model’s behavior, you can switch back to the builder, fine-tune your model’s parameters, and keep testing till it performs how you want it to.

6. Publish and share. 

Once you’re satisfied with your GPT’s results, click on the Publish option. This allows you to share your GPT and choose who can view or access it. 

How to write a custom GPT prompt

Writing an effective prompt for your custom GPT will not only enhance the accuracy of its responses but also help it understand what kind of information or assistance the user needs. Break your instructions into separate steps, especially when they involve multiple steps or actions. Clearly define what you’re expecting to help the GPT avoid providing generic responses. Provide enough contextual information and examples of desired outputs to ensure the GPT understands your requirements.

You can further enhance the clarity and readability of your prompts by utilizing structured formatting. Use headings to organize your instructions, use bolding or italics to emphasize key details, and structure multiple steps as bulleted or numbered lists.

Is a custom GPT available for free?

No, currently, you cannot create a custom GPT for free in ChatGPT. While you can use ChatGPT for free, its GPT builder capabilities are locked behind Plus, Team, and Enterprise plans. You can access and use some custom GPTs on the GPT Store on your Free plan, but this access is also limited to the platform’s capacity.

Careers and skills related to custom GPTs

While you don’t need any specific technical skills to create a custom GPT since the process is relatively straightforward, the most important skill to have is domain-specific knowledge for the industry or task you're building your GPT for. For example, if you’re building a custom GPT to review code, you’ll need to understand coding yourself to know what type of data you’ll train your model on. 

Although it isn’t necessary to have prompt engineering knowledge to create a custom GPT, knowing how to write effective, detailed prompts can help you achieve more relevant responses in less time. Other skills that might be helpful to better understand your GPT’s functionality include:

• Large language models (LLMs) and AI fundamentals

• API integration 

• Data protection guidelines

• Parameter optimization

• Conversational design

While you can create a custom GPT for a specialized task in any role, whether you’re a marketer, an IT support specialist, a software engineer, or a financial analyst, some AI-specific roles might require working with or creating custom GPT solutions. Some potential roles and their median US salaries are:

• Prompt engineer: $125,000 [2]

• AI product manager: $188,000 [3]

• AI consultant: $203,000 [4]

• AI trainer: $84,000 [5]

*All salary information represents the median total pay from Glassdoor as of October 2025. These figures include base salary and additional pay, which may represent profit-sharing, commissions, bonuses, or other compensation.

Getting started with customizable GPTs

To learn more about creating custom GPTs, you can explore online guides like those provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the OpenAI Academy, which provide detailed, step-by-step instructions on creating custom GPTs. Learning the fundamentals of prompt engineering through an online course, like the Prompt Engineering Specialization offered by Vanderbilt University, can also be a great way to learn about crafting effective prompts for your custom GPT. 

If you want to start with the basics of AI and LLMs, consider taking a boot camp, like the Gen AI Boot Camp offered by Google or the AI & Machine Learning Boot Camp offered by Virginia Tech.

Resources to help you build career confidence

Keep up with the latest trends, and get career advice and insights into in-demand skills by subscribing to our LinkedIn newsletter, Career Chat. If you want to keep exploring skills, courses, and concepts related to AI and custom GPTs, check out the following resources:

• Take the quiz: Which Prompt Engineering Course Should You Take?

• Watch on YouTube: How I'm Using Custom GPTs to Scale My Online Magazine

• Hear from an expert in the industry: The Secret to Using GenAI Tools Effectively: Insight from Coursera’s Former CEO

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