Much of the frustration people feel with AI actually comes down to "not providing information." AI knows nothing about your situation, your material, or your preferences. It's not a mind reader.
AI Can Only Answer Within the Information It's Given
For example, if you ask it to "write an introduction for our service," AI doesn't know your service, so it can only produce bland generalities.
Conversely, if you give it the service's features, price, target audience, and how it differs from competitors, you'll get concrete, usable text back. The quantity and quality of the information becomes, directly, the quality of the answer.
What's Worth Providing
- The material itself β Paste in or attach meeting minutes, emails, PDFs, data
- The purpose β What it's for (internal use? for sales?)
- The reader β Who will read it (an expert? a beginner? an executive?)
- A tone sample β Paste in one piece of text that was well received in the past
- What you don't want β "Don't use jargon," "No emoji"
"It Feels Rude to Paste a Long Passage" Is a Misconception
With a human, you'd hesitate to hand over a long document, but AI is good at reading large amounts of text at once. The more you hold back and trim information, the thinner the answer becomes. It's actually about right to "paste in everything that might be relevant."
There's a Knack to the Order, Too
When pasting in long material, putting the material first and your question last raises the quality of the answer (with long passages, the accuracy visibly changes).
(Paste the long material here)
Based on the material above, summarize XX into three points.
"Have it read first, then ask at the end." Simply being mindful of this order reduces the things that slip through when handling long passages.
But Confidential Information Is a Different Matter
Just because it's convenient doesn't make it safe to casually paste in other people's personal information, company secrets, or passwords. We cover this in detail in the separate article "Ways You Shouldn't Use It."
Summary
A vague answer = a sign that AI doesn't have enough information.
When an answer feels shallow, check: "What do I know about this matter, and did I convey it to the AI?" Usually, you've forgotten to hand over the premises that are sitting in your head.