Using AI can be both helpful and challenging. You need to know what you want to do before you ask AI to do it. If you don’t, you won’t get the results that you are expecting. Remember that prompting equals writing. The better you get at writing prompts, the better results from AI you’ll receive.
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How to write a basic AI prompt
The way you write your prompts determines the type of results that you get. You need to be specific, concise and direct. Writing a good prompt is both an art and a science. Good prompts are designed.
There are three parts to a basic prompt. Task, context and references. For the task, consider what you want the AI to do.
- Do you want to write an email?
- Write some code?
- Or create a picture of a scary pumpkin?
Then, you may want to add a role or persona to your prompt. Ask it to think like a developer or editor.
For the context, determine what type of output you want. Be direct and concise.
Write a blog post on the three best ways to learn the coding language Python.
You may want to add references. Provide the AI with more examples or documents. Try using please and thank you to get better results.
Evaluate the Output
Treat the AI like an intern. Review and check its work. Ask yourself:
- Is the output accurate?
- Is the output biased?
- Does it have enough information?
- Is the output relevant to the project or task?
- Is it consistent if I use the same prompt multiple times?
Refine the prompt
When you don’t get the results you expect, you’ll need to refine the prompt.
- Try different words to describe what you want.
- Revise the prompt to use shorter sentences. Or break it into individual sentences.
- Introduce constraints. Add more details to narrow the type of results that you get.
- Use one of these 9 Useful AI Prompts if you need more ideas.
- Or try a prompt from Microsoft’s Copilot Prompt Gallery.