AI Helpful Tips: Creating Effective Prompts
What is an AI prompt?
An AI Prompt is your input into the AI system to obtain specific results. In other words, prompts are conversation starters: what and how you tell something to the AI for it to respond in a way that generates useful responses for you. It’s like having a conversation with another person, only in this case the conversation is text-based, and with AI.
Be specific
To get better results, be specific and clear in your prompts. For example, specify the genre, audience, length, and tone when asking for a story. This helps generate more useful outputs and reduces the chances of inaccuracies.
Sample Prompt: Asking AI for an apple pie recipe that you can prepare in less than 15 minutes is more specific than just asking AI for an apple pie recipe.
“Act as if…”
To generate better prompts, ask the AI to behave as a specific type of person, process, or object. This helps the AI tailor its responses to fit the role. Adding context like this makes the AI’s output more relevant and useful.
Sample Prompt: Ask AI to act as if they are a personal trainer when creating a healthy recipe for apple pie. Since the AI is acting as if they are a personal trainer helps to narrow down the type of recipes that will be given.
Tell it how you want your output to be presented
Generative AI can produce diverse outputs. Specifying the desired output type enhances results. You can improve prompts by stating the format you would like, such as an executive summary, story, article, table etc. This clarity helps the AI generate more accurate and useful responses.
Sample Prompt: Ask AI to create an article for the university department newsletter that includes an apple pie recipe. Asking AI for an article that includes a recipe helped to enhance the results.
Use “do” and “don’t”
Specifying what you do and don’t want in an AI response can save time and improve results. For example, when creating a recipe, you can list desired ingredients and those to avoid. This helps the AI tailor its response to your preferences. Clear instructions lead to more accurate and useful outputs
Sample Prompt: Asking AI for a recipe that does include apples but doesn’t include cinnamon. By being specific, this helped to give AI clear results to your specifications.
Consider tone and audience
Provide the AI with details about your audience and the desired tone to get better results. Adding specificity and context enhances the AI’s output quality.
Sample Prompt: Asking AI for a funny and heartwarming family story that includes apple pie is more effective than a generic request for something funny because you provided the tone and audience.
If you want to learn more about Prompt Engineering, visit this website.
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