How to Write Better AI Prompts

With AI becoming more advanced, it’s only natural that more businesses are starting to take advantage of it. But, are you using AI to its full capabilities? If not, it might be time to learn how to write better AI prompts to make sure you’re getting the most out of the technology.

What Is an AI Prompt?

An AI prompt is essentially the text you provide to an AI model to generate a response. The quality of your prompts can help determine the quality of the AI’s response. For example, if you provide a vague prompt, you might not get back the response you had hoped for.

Learning to write better AI prompts can help make sure that you get clear, concise, and useful responses, while poorly thought-out prompts can often lead to vague or irrelevant answers.

Be Clear and Specific

Make sure to be clear about what you’re asking for when writing an AI prompt. Being overly ambiguous can confuse AI, leading to poor, or even completely irrelevant results.

Example:

  • Vague: Tell me about space.
  • Clear: Explain the process of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy.

Just think of it as if you were giving a task to a work colleague, if you simplify your request, you might not get the desired outcome.

Set the Tone

If your AI prompt is for written content or a social media post, make sure to include the tone you want the text to be in. For example, you could ask within your prompt for the text to be written in a formal manner.

Each business has its own unique tone, so making sure that your prompts include the desired tone, will ensure that anything you get back suites your business needs.

Use Structured Prompts

Structured prompts use a predefined format or template to guide the AI. This can be particularly useful for complex queries or when consistency in the output format is essential.

Example:

  • Unstructured: Tell me about the benefits of exercise.
  • Structured: List five benefits of regular exercise, and provide a brief explanation for each.

Experiment

Sometimes finding the perfect prompt requires a little experimentation. Test out different phrases, levels of detail, and structures to see what works best for you.

Ask the AI for the same output, but different tones, to see the differences, and keep making adjustments until you find the prompts that match you and your business needs best.

Common AI Prompt Pitfalls

There are a a few common mistakes that people often fall trap to when writing AI prompts. These can include overloading the prompt with too much information.

While it’s important to make sure that you’re not vague when writing the best AI prompt, you can also go too far and include too much information, overwhelming the AI and leading to fragmented or incomplete responses.

Another thing to bear in mind when creating your AI prompts is the AI’s capabilities and limitations. For example, asking ChatGPT to create an entire novel in the style of J.K. Rowling is completely unrealistic. However, asking it to write a short story inspired by the world created by J.K. Rowling might yield better results.

Writing better AI prompts is an art, something many people have yet to fully understand. Taking the time to practice and compare the results is one of the best ways to learn how to improve at creating AI prompts, which will eventually start helping you to obtain better results.

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