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Prompts·2 min read

Stop asking AI to 'write something'

The single change that makes AI output stop sounding generic — and it takes one extra sentence.

Most people's first prompt looks like this:

Write a message to my customer about a delayed order.

And the reply comes back sounding like a bank letter. Stiff, over-polite, full of "we sincerely regret any inconvenience caused". You paste it, feel a bit embarrassed, and rewrite it yourself.

The problem is not the AI. It answered exactly what you asked.

What is actually missing

When you ask a colleague to write that message, they already know four things you did not have to say: who the customer is, what your business sounds like, how late the order is, and what you are willing to offer. The AI knows none of it, so it fills the gaps with the most average version of each.

Average is the default. You have to spend that default.

The one extra sentence

Add context in this order — who you are, who it is for, and what outcome you want:

I run a small bakery in Mumbai. Write a WhatsApp message to a regular customer whose birthday cake order is running two hours late. I want to keep her as a customer. Warm, apologetic, not corporate. Offer a free delivery next time. Under 60 words.

Same model, same five seconds. Completely different reply — because now there is only one sensible answer instead of a thousand.

Why this works

You are not being polite to the AI, and you are not using magic words. You are narrowing the range of acceptable answers. The wider that range, the more the output drifts to the middle of everything it has ever read. The narrower it is, the more it sounds like you.

Try it now

Take any prompt you have used this week and add three things:

  1. Who you are — "I'm a final-year commerce student", "I run a two-person design studio"
  2. Who it's for — "for a recruiter at a mid-size firm", "for a client who is not technical"
  3. What good looks like — "under 100 words", "friendly but not casual", "no bullet points"

Run the old prompt and the new one side by side. The difference is not subtle, and once you have seen it you will not go back.

The short version: AI is not bad at writing. It is bad at guessing. Stop making it guess.