Using personas in AI prompts

99% of people don’t know how to use personas when writing prompts.

Many believe that adding a persona to the prompt will improve the results returned by the AI.

It actually will, but not in the way that many people expect.

But first – what is a persona?

A “persona” is an instruction to the AI to think or act like “someone” or “something.”

You’ve probably encountered prompt examples that start with:

💬 “You’re a learning professional. Your task is to…”
or
💬 “You’re an instructional designer with 10 years of experience. You need to…”

But does that really help?

It depends.

Are you looking for a standard fact-based response in neutral language? You don’t need to add a persona as it probably won’t influence the result.

But if you would like to receive a deviation from the standard, whether in terms of the information received or the language used, then using a persona might yield great results.

👉 Consider these two prompts:

💬 “You are a scientist. Explain the creation of the world in two sentences.”

or

💬 “You are a Catholic priest. Explain the creation of the world in two sentences.”

You can imagine that the results from the AI would be different, right?

Last but not least—does adding working experience to the persona improve the result?

👉 Try it yourself. You can use, for example:
💬 “You are a Catholic bishop. Explain the creation of the world in two sentences.”

or

💬 “You are the Holy Pope. Explain the creation of the world in two sentences.”

Report the results in the comments 😂