28 Tips to Take Your ChatGPT Prompts to the Next Level

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.

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.

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 on a topic.

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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.

Turn your sketches into something more real.

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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.

You could get your scribbled doodles turned into photorealistic images, for example, but that's just one idea. You can turn a family portrait into a claymation style, or upload photos of your pet dog and a tropical background and get them combined. ChatGPT will tackle just about any image challenge you can think of, and you can edit the resulting picture with follow-up prompts too (like “Make the scene sunnier”).

One way of getting outside a prompting rut is to get ChatGPT to respond in a way that matches someone famous, or takes on a well-established perspective. So you could ask “What would Steve Jobs do here?” or “What would Churchill's perspective be on this?” as part of your prompt.

With the caveat that AI doesn't really know what Jobs or Churchill might do or think, and is instead making some educated guesses based on what it knows about these very famous people (about whom much has been written), it can help change your perspective on a topic or suggest a way forward when you’re stuck.

Another way to get more pertinent information out of ChatGPT more quickly is to affix the line “I'm a very lazy person” to the end of your prompt. It sounds like you're sharing a little too much information with the AI, but the difference it can make to the responses is significant: Answers become shorter and more to the point, while instructions are simpler.

You can adapt this in various ways too, so you might want to tell ChatGPT you're very busy or very fastidious instead. They’ll all affect the way the chatbot responds, and give you answers better tailored to what you're looking for.

If you tell ChatGPT more about who you are, your prompt responses will be more relevant and personalized. You can do this on mobile by tapping the menu button (top left), then your avatar (top right), then Personalization. On the desktop, click your avatar (bottom left), then Personalization.

You can specify your nickname and job here, as well as anything else you think is relevant: your taste in movies, how old you are, how much experience you have with DIY projects around the home, or whatever else is relevant. ChatGPT will bear all of this in mind whenever you start new conversations.

ChatGPT can put together some playlists for you.

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If you're finding the algorithms on your streaming service of choice aren't serving up mixes that you're happy with, you can give the task to ChatGPT. Try something like “Give me a 2-hour chill-out playlist for a rainy Sunday night featuring classics from the 1970s.” You can see how each of those variables can be changed to match what you need.

ChatGPT now actually includes plug-ins for platforms like Apple Music and Spotify, so you can connect your accounts and get the playlists ported right across. Head to the ChatGPT Apps page on the web to find and add these plug-ins.

Make use of ChatGPT's incognito mode.

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While it can be helpful for ChatGPT to remember previous conversations and personalize its answers to match what it knows about you, this isn't something you're always going to want. Maybe you want to start from scratch on a topic, or you need recommendations that aren't influenced by prior chats.

You can simply tell ChatGPT to forget everything that's come before, or you can use the incognito mode, which is called temporary chat (the conversation will be forgotten after it's finished). On desktop or mobile, select the dotted speech bubble in the top right corner when you start a new chat.

This is handy if you're uncertain about how to frame your prompt, or if you're not sure whether or not it includes enough information: At the end, add something like “Ask me any questions you need clarity on before providing an answer.”

While this means it will take longer to get to the responses, it should ensure that ChatGPT knows exactly what you're after—and ultimately you'll save time by not having to explain yourself further in follow-up prompts later on.

As well as providing information, ChatGPT can test your knowledge—and if you're learning about something for the first time, it can be a powerful way of making sure you're taking in as much as you need to know.

Simply ask ChatGPT to "test me on this subject" and it will do so. You can set parameters such as the number and the difficulty of the questions, and you can base the quiz on an existing conversation with the AI or on information on the web.

ChatGPT can give you responses in the form of a table if you ask. This is particularly helpful for getting information or creative ideas. For example, you could tabulate meal ideas and ingredients, or game ideas and equipment, or the days of the week and how they're said in a few different languages.

Using follow-up prompts and natural language, you can have ChatGPT make changes to the tables it has drawn and even produce the tables in a standard format that can be understood by another program (such as Microsoft Excel).

If you provide ChatGPT with a typed list of information, it can respond in a variety of ways. Maybe you want it to create anagrams from a list of names, or sort a list of products into alphabetical order, or turn all the items in a list into upper case.

If needed, you can then click the copy icon (the double rectangle) at the end of an answer to have the processed text sent to the system clipboard.

Get ChatGPT to respond in a particular style.

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With some careful prompting, you can get ChatGPT out of its rather dull, matter-of-fact, default tone and into something much more interesting—such as the style of your favorite author or poet.

You could go for the searing simplicity of an Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver story, the lyrical rhythm of a Shakespearean play, or the density of a Dickens novel. The resulting prose won't come close to the genius of the actual authors themselves, but it's another way of getting more creative with the output you generate.

ChatGPT can really impress when it's given restrictions to work within, so don't be shy when it comes to telling the bot to limit its responses to a certain number of words or a certain number of paragraphs.

It could be everything from condensing the information in four paragraphs down into one, or even asking for answers with words of seven characters or fewer (just to keep it simple). If ChatGPT doesn't follow your responses properly, you can correct it, and it'll try again.

Specify your level of understanding to ChatGPT.

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Another way of tweaking the way ChatGPT responds is to tell it who the intended audience is for its output. You might have seen WIRED's videos in which complex subjects are explained to people with different levels of understanding. This works in a similar way.

For example, you can tell ChatGPT that you are speaking to a bunch of 10-year-olds or to an audience of business entrepreneurs and it will respond accordingly. It works well for generating multiple outputs along the same theme.

ChatGPT is a very capable prompt engineer itself. If you ask it to come up with creative and effective inputs for artificial intelligence engines such as Dall-E and Midjourney, you'll get text you can then input into other AI tools you're playing around with. You're even able to ask for tips with prompts for ChatGPT itself.

When it comes to generating prompts, the more detailed and specific you are about what you're looking for the better. You can get the chatbot to extend and add more detail to your sentences, you can get it to role-play as a prompt generator for a specific AI tool, and you can tell it to refine its answers as you add more and more information.

ChatGPT can still do some ASCII art.

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ChatGPT has a full-blown image creator and editor now, but it can still go retro by also producing pictures of ASCII art. That's the art made up of characters and symbols rather than colors. The results won't win you any prizes, but it's pretty fun to play around with.

The usual ChatGPT rules apply, in that the more specific you are in your prompt the better, and you can get the bot to add new elements and take elements away as you go. You can generate multiple variations on the same theme.

ChatGPT can generate images of all descriptions for you: Just say you want it to produce an image or select Create an image before you write out your prompt. As with text, try to be as precise as possible about what it is you want to see and how it's shown. Do you want something that looks like a watercolor painting, or like it was taken by a DSLR camera?

You can have some real fun with this: Put Columbo in a cyberpunk setting, or see how Jurassic Park would look in the Victorian era. The possibilities are almost endless.

You don't have to do all the typing yourself when it comes to ChatGPT. Copy-and-paste is your friend, and there's no problem with pasting in text from other sources. You can also upload documents: Via the + (plus) button in the prompt box, there's an upload option.

Perhaps one of the best ways of using this approach is to get ChatGPT to simplify text that you don't understand—the explanation of a difficult scientific concept, for instance. You can also get it to translate text into different languages or write it in a more engaging or fluid style.

If you want to go exploring, ask ChatGPT to create a text-based choose-your-own-adventure game. You can specify the theme and the setting of the adventure, as well as any other ground rules to put in place. When I tried this out, I found myself wandering through a spooky castle, with something sinister apparently hiding in the shadows.

You can give the AI examples to work with.

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Another way to improve the responses you get from ChatGPT is to give it some data to work with before you ask your question. For instance, you could give it a list of book summaries together with their genre, then ask it to apply the correct genre label to a new summary. Another option would be to tell ChatGPT about activities you enjoy and then get a new suggestion.

There's no magic combination of words you have to use here. Just use natural language as always, and ChatGPT will understand what you're getting at. Specify that you're providing examples at the start of your prompt, then tell the bot that you want a response with those examples in mind.

ChatGPT will give you feedback, if you ask for it.

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You can ask ChatGPT for feedback on any of your own writing, whether it be emails you're sending to friends, the short story you're submitting to a competition, or the prompts you're typing into the AI bot. Ask for pointers on spelling, grammar, tone, readability, or anything else you want to scrutinize.

For example, ChatGPT approved the above paragraph as being clear and effective but said it could use a call to action at the end. Try this prompt today!

In the same way that ChatGPT can mimic the style of certain authors that it knows about, it can also play a role: a frustrated salesman, an excitable teenager (you'll most likely get a lot of emoji and abbreviations back), or the iconic Western film star John Wayne.

There are countless roles you can play around with. These prompts might not score highly in terms of practical applications, but they're definitely a useful insight into the potential of these AI chatbots.

Get ChatGPT to look at information available online.

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You can type queries into ChatGPT that you might otherwise type into Google, looking for answers: Think “How much should I budget for a day of sightseeing in London?” or “What are the best ways to prepare for a job interview?” for example. Almost anything will get a response of some sort—though as always, don't assume that AI responses will always be 100 percent accurate.

To make sure ChatGPT searches the web, open the + (plus) menu on the prompt box, then select Web search. The responses will include links to websites where the AI has pulled its information from, so you can double-check the details.

Your answers can be seriously improved if you give ChatGPT some ingredients to work with before asking for a response. They could be literal ingredients—suggest a dish from what's left in the fridge—or they could be anything else.

So don't just ask for a murder mystery scenario. Also list out the characters who are going to appear. Don't just ask for ideas of where to go in a city; specify the city you're going to, the types of places you want to see, and the people you'll have with you.

Your prompts don't always have to get ChatGPT to generate something from scratch. You can start it off with something and then let the AI finish it. The model will take clues from what you've already written and build on it.

This can come in handy for everything from coding a website to composing a poem—and you can then get ChatGPT to go back and refine its answer as well.

You've no doubt noticed how online arguments have tended toward the binary in recent years, so get ChatGPT to help add some gray between the black and the white. It's able to argue both sides of an argument if you ask it to, including both pros and cons.

From politics and philosophy to sports and the arts, ChatGPT is able to sit on the fence quite impressively—not in a vague way, but in a way that can help you understand tricky issues from multiple perspectives.