AI chatbots offer a human-like technology that can help you out with many tasks. But what a lot of people don’t realise is interacting with them is, well, surprisingly human.
ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI, hit 100 million users in just two months. To give that some context, Instagram took 2.5 years to hit that number.
So, it kind of exploded onto the scene.
What came with it was lots of content claiming things like “The only 10 AI prompts you’ll ever need”. It made using something like ChatGPT seem complicated and, well, it’s not.
See AI as that new team member
If you asked your colleague to go and create a report on your biggest competitors, you might get a 10-page document giving you everything from their heritage to open job roles. Or you might get a really brief summary of each one’s main products, presented in a table. You’re leaving it to interpretation.
Tell them which competitors to look at, what information to find, and how to present it – and now you’re getting somewhere.
But what about when they come back and it’s not quite right? Do you a) get frustrated and never ask them to do anything again, or b) tell them how to improve it and ask them to update it?
The beauty of AI is you don’t feel guilty asking for changes. Then more changes. And then even more changes. When your colleague might tell you stick your requests, AI will just keep on helping and do it all in a matter of seconds.
Tips for AI or even just colleagues 😉
Giving you tips kind of goes against our whole point here. Really, this is just some advice on setting expectations, iterating and being realistic with your outcome – which is arguably helpful for any team communication!
- Give as much guidance as possible. Think about what you want to achieve, put some parameters around it, and specify what you want as an output.
“Create strapline ideas for a wellbeing campaign we’re going to launch in the summer. Include clever wordplay around wellness trends. Create 10 ideas, each one with justification as to why it will work and ideas to bring it to life.”
- See it as a conversation. It’s unlikely anyone will deliver your request perfect first time. So, expect some back and forth as you get clearer on what you want and give guidance on ways to update and improve.
“Create more ideas like idea number four. Include no more than 10 words in each. Create at least three that include humour.“
- Be prepared to finish it yourself. No one is going to perfectly deliver a task you have in your head. They may get close and take a lot of the graft away, but the finishing touches are all yours. So get it in a format which makes it as easy as possible for you to take it on and use as you need.
“Put these ideas in a table for me to copy and paste into excel. Include a column for the tagline, a column for the justification and a column for activation ideas.“
Not all colleagues are equal
There’s many AI tools out there but it’s worth considering what you’re prepared to share with them.
Something like ChatGPT, that’s a colleague you can’t fully trust with sensitive information. They can still be incredibly useful but you may want to hold back on sensitive details (that’s where using dummy names and a find-and-replace can be really useful).
A paid-for subscription to Copilot on the other hand, that’s like someone with full security clearance. No problem in getting them to look through your sensitive data. In fact, uploading a file of data and asking for analysis is great time-saving way to use it.
In conclusion
AI chatbots are designed to be simple to use. So just chat to them. Try things out, learn better ways, and see them as a helpful colleague. Whilst we don’t doubt your real colleagues are extremely lovely and supportive, AI has added benefits: it’s incredibly quick, it won’t get tired of your requests, it doesn’t have a birthday, and you can be sure – it definitely won’t steal your mug.
If you and your internal comms team want an interactive walkthrough of how to make the most of AI, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.