Using AI to Create Personalized Cover Letters with Gravity Forms

Screenshot of the PDFCoverLetters.com website, with the accompanying text "A Cast Study: Personalized AI Cover Letter Generator"
AI has been making waves of late thanks to a powerful tool from OpenAI called ChatGPT. What I wanted to know was just how powerful AI really is, and if it could be leveraged in Gravity Forms and Gravity PDF to create truly personalized documents.

This story begins the week before Christmas, when my brother lost his job after the business that had employed him for 10 years shut down (mismanagement after an acquisition).

Instead of getting ready to enjoy the holidays, he had to figure out what he was going to do now. He’s been interested in a career in the mining sector for a while now, and losing his job is probably the push he needed. Still, the timing sucked!

About me and my brother: we joke that he’s the brawn, and I’m the brain. Which is why he asked me for help. I was meant to be finalizing my own work, so I could enjoy some quality R&R over the Christmas break, but dropped tools to give him a hand.

Like him, I haven’t had to go job hunting in 10 years. But after a few hours of writing I quickly remembered why I disliked the application process so much šŸ˜®ā€šŸ’Ø (and probably why I started my own business).

This was when ChatGPT was really blowing up Twitter, and my friend David Smith over at Gravity Wiz had just released a free Gravity Forms OpenAI Add-On.

The mere thought of combining AI and Gravity Forms together made my brain start spinning with all the possibilities! šŸ¤” But the idea that stood out the most was how I could automate a cover letter. 

After the Christmas festivities I started experimenting with ChatGPT and DALLĀ·E 2 ā€“ which is basically an AI for images. Once I got used to how to write a good prompt, I became really impressed with what these AI tools can do.

Here are some of the images I had DALLĀ·E 2 generate:

My experimentation using ChatGPT and OpenAIā€™s GPT-3 API to produce a personalized cover letter yielded very positive results, and I felt confident it was up to the task.Ā 

So I began building PDFCoverLetters.com using the tools and software I know and love: WordPress, Gravity Forms, and Gravity PDF.Ā 

After two weeks working on the project in my free time, I had it ready to launch. It took longer than anticipated, but thatā€™s because I was using a number of new and unfamiliar technologies (and I had some scope creep like .docx generation).

Walkthrough Video

Head over to PDFCoverLetters.com and try it for yourself; you can use the tool for free once a day.

Technology

The following products/services were used to create PDFCoverLetters.com:

If you are interested in learning more about the development involved with this project, I’ll be doing a guest post next month on GravityForms.com. Signup to our newsletter to get notified.

Looking to use AI to create personalized documents? Find out how Gravity PDF and Gravity Forms can help you.