Getting started with prompts for text-based Generative AI tools – Harvard University

The information, sentences, or questions that you enter into a Generative AI tool (“prompts”) are a big influence on the quality of outputs you receive. After you enter a prompt, the AI model analyzes your input and generates a response based on the patterns it has learned through its training. More descriptive prompts can improve the quality of the outputs.

This guide gives you a basic overview of how to Generate better prompts. There are more resources at the end, and we’ll be updating our guidance over time as we learn how generative AI is being used at the University.