AI Prompt Tips: How to Create Better Prompts

The advent of generative AI and natural-language processing means that we can now create more and do more, but making the most of these powerful tools means being able to tell them what you want effectively in order to get the results you're looking for. Knowing how to write a good prompt is essential to getting good output from AI tools. Consider these AI prompt tips to improve your prompt-writing capabilities:

• Be Specific: You've probably heard the saying, "Garbage in, garbage out," but in the world of generative AI, it's more like "vague in, vague out." The broader your query is, the less compelling the results are likely to be. Be clear and detailed about what you want.
• Tell, Don't Ask: Phrase your prompts as commands rather than questions. You don't need to be polite to an AI, and doing so can actually add clutter to the prompt that distracts the AI, causing it to give you unnecessary details that don't fit what you wanted.
• Provide Context: Don't be afraid to add relevant context to give the AI a better understanding of your needs. Adding information about the target audience, the style you want, or the perspective you're looking for can help the tool produce better results.
• Try, Try Again: Using AI can be an iterative process. If you don't like the results, reword the prompt and try again. Or ask for a different tone or style. You could also try just regenerating the results; sometimes, you'll get something you like better the second time.
• Ask the AI for Help: If you're really stuck, ask the tool to suggest ways to improve the results it gave you. You never know what it might come up with.
• Encourage it to Keep Going: If you're having an AI tool generate text and you need more than what it wrote, you can give it a nudge with "continue" or "keep going." If this doesn't work, you can also try breaking the task down into smaller sections and generating the results in steps.

Further Reading

• Using AI Generation Tools
• How to Become an AI Prompt Engineer
• How to Perfect Your Prompt-Writing for AI Generators
• Writing ChatGPT Prompts
• Prompting Explained
• How to Communicate With AI Tools