Co-Creation . . . Finding Your AI Sweet Spot.
AI is not just for highly technical people. It truly is beneficial for almost everyone. It's not just deepfakes and chatbots; it really can help you be more productive. It can co-write emails, sales pitches, business plans, Instagram blurbs, a dating app bio, a mission statement, heck, even a funny joke to text a friend. The list is truly endless.
(This article focuses on AI writing generation, but the prompting techniques are the foundational pieces that are applicable to all AI generation.)
This doesn't mean it replaces you, ...quite the opposite, in fact. It helps you articulate your thoughts or gather correct information.
Here are some tips and tricks to help you navigate:
It needs your touch and your voice
Don't just copy and paste what AI tells you. Often, the first pass is bloated, overly complicated, and overwhelming." We still have to massage the data (or the prompt) to be human-digestible. If you wouldn't write it or read it with complete comprehension, then it's not good output! Edit it, re-prompt it, copy and paste sections of each prompt that feel valuable. Create with it, don't let it create it all for you.
Know Your Reader
We live in a time where people have very short attention spans and are highly overstimulated. You are not writing so someone can copy and paste it back into AI just to understand it.
Think about who's actually going to read it and what they truly need to comprehend. What do they need to know? What can you leave out? Does this need to be simply conveyed, or is it highly technical and needs a deep dive into each point? Asking these kinds of questions every time you generate content will help you immensely.
Use effective prompting
Be specific and very descriptive of what you want to generate. For this we'll do a dating bio.
Give the AI a role:
You are a relationship expert specializing in dating profiles. You excel at writing them to help people find genuine connections. You are an expert in therapy and you have some smart tips and tricks to get truly good matches.
(Don't know what role to pick? Ask it to help you pick one based on your task. Every prompt doesn't have to be amazing; you can also just straight ask it to help you. That's the beautiful part of iteration!)
Be Specific and Descriptive:
Add things like "keep it short and simple." "a small paragraph describing X." "give me a list of bullet points." "explain it like you are talking to a middle schooler, etc."Consistently try different prompts to see what works well. This is where the magic really is.
Give it examples
Write some sentences about what you are like. For a dating bio, you might provide a few sentences describing your hobbies, your personality, or what you're looking for. For example: "I love hiking with my dog." or "I'm a quiet person who loves to read sci-fi." or "I'm looking for someone who enjoys trying new restaurants." The more specific examples you give, the better the AI can match your desired tone and content.
Give it Rules:
Things like: "Focus only on positive traits and experiences." "Make sure it sounds like me, not like a generic template." "Do not include anything about past relationships or sensitive topics."
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate (but save the results that you like!)
Don't expect perfection on the first try. AI generation is a conversation. Tweak your prompts, combine good bits from different outputs, and keep refining until you get exactly what you're looking for. The more you play with it, the better you'll get at guiding the AI to produce amazing content. Save the outputs you like and feed them into the next prompt as examples.
Play around! Try out things. Don't worry it's easy. Go give it a try!
Note: he examples and rules we talked about in this article were for fun, personal stuff like dating bios. When you're using AI for business needs, you'll want to add rules like "If you don't know the answer, don't guess," or "Only use new, verified information." It's all about tailoring your prompts to the task at hand!
