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AI-enabled digital assistants like Chat GPT, Copilot, and Meta AI are definitely changing the creative process – at least for me. At first, I thought this AI stuff would turn me into a lazy thinker. But after getting deep into using it, I realised it’s a great companion. The saying, “garbage in, garbage out,” also applies to the use of AI. If you want to make your life easier, then your prompts have to be well thought through. Also, the fact that these AI-enabled digital assistants hallucinate (give false/incorrect information), you need to review your output and the sources. This is essentially the same process you would follow when doing your normal research: verify the information and sources.

I’m still learning to draft the best prompts for my personal research, but here are some tips from Microsoft | Five quick prompting tips to get more from your AI assistant.

The “Elements of a Good Prompt” PDF highlights tips and aspects for writing prompts effectively. (Source: microsoft.com)

For this article, I used the basic version of Copilot. It doesn’t offer much compared to the commercial version for Microsoft 365 (M365) – what a beauty! At work, we also have an in-house AI platform powered by ChatGPT. Since I started using AI assistants and learning how to get the best out of them, they have proved to be effective assistants. Let’s jump into my prompt for this post.

Prompt

You’ve been approached by a writer who’s been blogging for more than a decade. Their biggest worry is that AI-assisted writing will diminish their creative value and they won’t feel as though the output is their own work. Share 5 tips, with explanations, to help them embrace AI as a companion in the creative writing process.

Does my prompt meet the elements of a good prompt shared above?

Let’s break it down a little. By the way, I actually asked Copilot to compare the elements in the image to my prompt and give me results in table format. Below is a screenshot of the results (obviously unedited). It seems I can’t export results to Word or Excel or PowerPoint directly from Copilot – but I can ask Copilot to generate a table while working in Word, etc., when using Copilot for M365.

As you can see from the sentence above the table, I asked Copilot to reorder my columns in my preferred order which I specified as follows: Please reorder your columns as follows: element, image guidelines and assessment. The initial response did not have sources so I asked Copilot to cite sources. I have copied and pasted the result below, verbatim, for demonstration purposes.

Response (red text)

My thoughts

Nothing is new under the sun, the stories we tell have been told by others before us but that doesn’t mean we stop telling them. If my post title read, ‘5 tips…’, then I would have added my personal touch to the response generated by the AI assistant. My changes would have included renaming the tips, adding personal examples, images, embedded content, more sources, etc.

With all this in mind, I am definitely going to explore using an AI assistant to generate content. I feel as though my creativity can be channelled into the prompt and get the best content that reflects me as a writer. Efficient much? I suppose! And AI plugins are also great – I am yet to test the capabilities of the ones I have added to my WordPress.

I will definitely use AI in my creative writing process and encourage you to experiment with it first before writing it off completely.

New year, new writing tools!

About Post Author

Nono Nyathi

Nono is a seasoned blogger and published author writing on personal growth, leadership and taxes. She recently started a travel and photography blog, adding to her topics of interest.
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