Sure, anyone can use OpenAI’s chatbot. But with smart engineering, you can get way more interesting results.
ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and other tools like them are making artificial intelligence available to the masses. We can now get all sorts of responses back on almost any topic imaginable. These chatbots can compose sonnets, write code, get philosophical, and automate tasks.
However, while you can just type anything you like into ChatGPT and get it to understand you, there are ways of getting more interesting and useful results out of the bot. This “prompt engineering” is becoming a specialized skill of its own.
Sometimes all it takes is the addition of a few more words or an extra line of instruction and you can get ChatGPT responses that are a level above what everyone else is seeing—and we’ve included several examples below.
While there’s lots you can do with the free version of ChatGPT, a few of these prompts require a paid ChatGPT Plus subscription. Where that’s the case, we’ve noted it in the tip.
Get ChatGPT to Critique Your Ideas Like Your Kid Would
We know that AI chatbots can be obsequious and sycophantic at times, but a little prompt engineering can stop that: Tell ChatGPT to act like a curious, inquisitive 10-year-old who wants to help and has a lot of questions, then get the AI to offer feedback on whatever you’re discussing.
Whether you’re trying to plan a vacation or a side hustle with AI, this childlike interrogation will quickly help you spot weak points and potential problems, rather than simply saying everything you suggest sounds great. It’ll often throw up questions you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of.
Use Your Phone Camera for Prompting Help
If you’re using the ChatGPT app on a phone, you can utilize the device camera and include snapped photos as part of your prompt. Some examples might be “How tall is this landmark,” “What type of insect is this,” or “What does this sign say in English?” Just tap the + (plus) button on the prompt box, then Camera to send photos with your prompt.
Ask for the 80-20
ChatGPT can be a useful learning resource for just about any topic—as long as it has devoured enough training data on it—but it can tend to return an overwhelming amount of information on occasion. One way to make it more efficient is to use the “80-20 rule” in your prompt.
Known as the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule posits that 20 percent of the work results in 80 percent of the outcome. In ChatGPT world, that means you can learn 80 percent of a topic from 20 percent of the key information about it.
The next time you need to brush up on something through AI, try asking ChatGPT for “the 80-20 on …” whatever it happens to be. It should get you up to speed quickly on historical periods, bands, scientific concepts, movies, and more.
Get ChatGPT to Improve on Your Doodles
As well as generating AI images from scratch, ChatGPT will happily remix existing pictures too. Tap or click the + (plus) button on the prompt box, then pick Add photos & files (desktop) or Files (mobile) to select one or more existing images. You can then use the prompt itself to explain what you want next.
