--- title: How to Teach AI About You for Better Results description: Learn how context, examples and preferences help AI give more personalised, useful responses without complicated prompts or technical jargon. image: https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/ai%20doesnt%20know%20you%20until%20you%20teach%20it.png --- [Skip to content](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/ai-doesnt-know-you-until-you-teach-it#main-content) [![Over fifties ai academy](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Over%20Fifties%20AI%20Academy%20Logo%20(trans).png?width=1024&height=1024&name=Over%20Fifties%20AI%20Academy%20Logo%20(trans).png)Homepage](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/) - [Home](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com) - [Blog](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog) - Solutions - [Foundations](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/build-a-scalable-online-business-with-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Email Marketing](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/simplified-email-marketing-for-over-50s-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Simple Automation](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/simplified-automation-and-productivity-for-over-50s-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Create Affiliate Income](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/start-a-scalable-affiliate-income-with-ai-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Workflow Automation](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/how-digital-workflow-automation-simplifies-side-hustles-for-retirees) - [Content Creation](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/confident-content-creation-for-over-50s-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [About Us](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/about-us) - [Privacy Policy](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/privacy-policy) - [Terms of Service](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/terms-of-service) - [Home](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com) - [Blog](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog) - Solutions - [Foundations](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/build-a-scalable-online-business-with-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Email Marketing](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/simplified-email-marketing-for-over-50s-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Simple Automation](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/simplified-automation-and-productivity-for-over-50s-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Create Affiliate Income](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/start-a-scalable-affiliate-income-with-ai-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [Workflow Automation](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/how-digital-workflow-automation-simplifies-side-hustles-for-retirees) - [Content Creation](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/confident-content-creation-for-over-50s-over-fifties-ai-academy) - [About Us](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/about-us) - [Privacy Policy](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/privacy-policy) - [Terms of Service](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/terms-of-service) ![](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/ai%20doesnt%20know%20you%20until%20you%20teach%20it.png?width=1200&height=630&name=ai%20doesnt%20know%20you%20until%20you%20teach%20it.png) ChatGPT AI for beginners AI Prompts # AI Doesn’t Know You—Until You Teach It ![Dan Dinneen](https://7528315.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528315/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-cms-elevate-theme_hubspot/elevate/images/avatar-placeholder.jpg?width=48&height=48&name=avatar-placeholder.jpg) Dan Dinneen October 8, 2026 # Better AI Results Begin With Teaching It About You **AI can write a perfectly tidy answer and still produce something that feels completely wrong for you.** That is because artificial intelligence does not automatically know your personality, audience, preferences, experience or the way you like things done. If you want personalised AI responses, the answer is not necessarily a cleverer prompt. Often, you simply need to give the AI better context. Think of it as briefing a new assistant on their first day: the more useful background you provide, the less guessing they have to do. This is one of the simplest ways for beginners to improve AI results without learning technical jargon. AI does not know you—until you teach it. --- ## AI Starts With Gaps in Its Knowledge Imagine asking a new employee to “write an email to my customers.” They might reasonably ask: - Who are the customers? - Why are we emailing them? - How formal should it sound? - What do they already know? - What do we want them to do next? An AI assistant has the same problem. If you do not provide that information, it has to fill the gaps with something generic. That is why an answer can be grammatically perfect but still sound as though it belongs to somebody else. **Aha! moment:** When AI gives you a generic answer, the problem may not be the AI or your wording. It may simply be missing the background information needed to make a good decision. --- ## Context Is Simply Useful Background The word *context* can sound technical, but there is nothing mysterious about it. If a friend asks, “What should I wear tomorrow?” you cannot give a useful answer until you know whether they are going to a wedding, mowing the lawn or heading to Antarctica. The missing background changes the answer. AI works the same way. Useful context might include: - **Your audience:** Who will read or use the result? - **Your purpose:** What are you trying to achieve? - **Your experience:** What do you know that should shape the answer? - **Your preferences:** What do you like or dislike? - **Your voice:** How do you naturally communicate? - **Your constraints:** What should the AI avoid or keep within? - **Examples:** What does a good result look like to you? In [Stop Asking AI Questions—Start Giving It Jobs](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/stop-asking-ai-questions-start-giving-it-jobs), we looked at giving AI a task, context and desired result. Teaching AI about you is the context part taken one step further. --- ## Show AI What “Sounds Like Me” Actually Means One of the best ways to improve AI writing is to give it a genuine sample of your writing. You might paste in an email, blog paragraph or social media post you wrote yourself and say: > This is an example of my natural writing style. Analyse it for tone, sentence length, vocabulary, humour and level of formality. Give me a short description of the style you observe. Do not rewrite the sample. Read the AI's description. Correct anything it gets wrong. Then, when you want help drafting something new, tell it to use those characteristics. This is far more useful than simply saying “make it sound human.” Human beings do not all sound alike. [How to Write Like Yourself Using AI (Without Sounding Like a Robot)](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/how-to-write-like-yourself-using-ai-without-sounding-like-a-robot) goes deeper into using examples, opinions and personality so AI assists your voice rather than replacing it. --- ## Teach It Who You Are Writing For Your own preferences are only half the story. AI also needs to understand the person receiving the result. Suppose you ask: > Explain artificial intelligence to beginners. That could mean school students, small-business owners, engineers changing careers or retirees who have barely used AI before. Now compare it with: > Explain artificial intelligence to adults over 50 who are comfortable using email and browsing the web but are completely new to AI. Use plain English, familiar everyday examples and no unexplained technical jargon. Keep the tone encouraging but practical. Same subject. Much better briefing. The AI now has enough information to make sensible choices about vocabulary, examples and detail. --- ## Give AI Your Preferences Before You Need Them Another useful habit is to write down the preferences that repeatedly matter to you. For example: - I prefer plain English. - Keep paragraphs fairly short. - Do not use technical jargon unless you explain it. - I like practical examples. - Do not exaggerate benefits or make unrealistic promises. - If important information is missing, ask me questions rather than inventing it. You can include relevant preferences whenever you begin an important task. Do not feel that you need to create a 10-page instruction manual about yourself. Start with the handful of things that noticeably improve the result. --- ## Examples Are Often Better Than Adjectives Suppose you tell AI: *“Make this funny.”* That leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Gentle observational humour, dad jokes, sarcasm, slapstick and stand-up comedy are all “funny” to somebody. Instead, you could say: > Use gentle, occasional humour like this example: \[paste a short example\]. Keep the useful information as the priority and do not turn every paragraph into a joke. Now the AI has something concrete to work from. The same principle applies to tone, formatting, product descriptions, emails and even brainstorming. Show the AI what you mean whenever possible. --- ## Let AI Interview You You do not always know what context the AI needs. Fortunately, you can make that its problem. Try: > I want your help creating \[result\]. Before you begin, ask me the questions you need to understand my audience, purpose, preferences and desired outcome. Ask one question at a time and do not draft the final result until you have enough information. This is one of the easiest techniques for beginners because you do not have to construct the perfect first prompt. You have turned prompting into a conversation. It also demonstrates the lesson from [One AI Prompt, Ten Different Results](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/one-ai-prompt-ten-different-results): changing audience, purpose, tone and format can dramatically change what the AI produces. --- ## Do Not Confuse Personalisation With Accuracy There is one important distinction. Teaching AI your preferences can make an answer more relevant to you. It does not automatically make factual information correct. If AI writes in exactly your preferred style but gives you the wrong date, price, medical fact or legal requirement, it is still wrong. For important factual claims, check reliable current sources. Personalisation improves the fit of an answer; verification improves your confidence that the information is true. This is part of the common-sense approach discussed in [AI Isn't Replacing Common Sense—It's Rewarding It](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/ai-isnt-replacing-common-sense-its-rewarding-it). --- ## A Five-Minute Exercise to Improve Your Next AI Response Before your next useful AI task, write down four things: 1. **Who am I?** Include only background relevant to this job. 2. **Who is this for?** Describe the audience or recipient. 3. **What does a good result look like?** Explain the outcome and format. 4. **What should the AI know about my preferences?** Add tone, examples or boundaries that matter. Then give the AI the job. If the result is still not right, do not immediately start again. Tell it what missed the mark and why. Over time, this becomes a very natural workflow: **brief, review, correct, improve.** --- ## The Better AI Knows the Job, the Less It Has to Guess You do not need AI to pretend to be you. You want it to understand enough about you, your audience and your goals to be genuinely helpful. Your life experience, opinions, examples and judgement are not things AI should replace. They are the ingredients that make its assistance more useful. So next time an AI response feels generic, resist the temptation to hunt for some magical prompt. Give it better background. Show it an example. Tell it what matters. And when you are not sure what it needs to know, simply ask it to ask you. --- **Keywords:** personalised AI, AI prompts, how to use AI, ChatGPT prompts, AI for beginners, ChatGPT for beginners, better AI responses, artificial intelligence over 50 ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.overfiftiesaiacademy.com%2Fblog%2Fai-doesnt-know-you-until-you-teach-it](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.overfiftiesaiacademy.com%2Fblog%2Fai-doesnt-know-you-until-you-teach-it) ## Keep reading ### [![](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/One%20Master%20Template%2c%20Five%20Products.png?width=1200&height=630&name=One%20Master%20Template%2c%20Five%20Products.png) digital products AI Over 50 Online Business One Master Template Can Become Five Digital Products](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/one-master-template-five-products-heres-how) ### [![](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/How%20to%20Use%20AI%20to%20Research%20Without%20Believing%20Everything%20It%20Says.png?width=1200&height=630&name=How%20to%20Use%20AI%20to%20Research%20Without%20Believing%20Everything%20It%20Says.png) AI for beginners Digital Confidence AI Safety How to Use AI for Research Without Believing Everything](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/how-to-use-ai-to-research-without-believing-everything-it-says) [![Over fifties ai academy](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Over%20Fifties%20AI%20Academy%20Logo%20(trans).png?width=1024&height=1024&name=Over%20Fifties%20AI%20Academy%20Logo%20(trans).png "Over fifties ai academy")](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/) - [Home](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com) - [Blog](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog) - Solutions - [About Us](https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/about-us) --- Privacy Policy · Legal · © 2026 Over Fifties AI Academy. All rights reserved. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Dan Dinneen", "url" : "https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/author/dan-dinneen" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-08T22:04:00.696Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-08T22:04:00.000Z", "headline" : "How to Teach AI About You for Better Results", "image" : [ "https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/ai%20doesnt%20know%20you%20until%20you%20teach%20it.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/blog/ai-doesnt-know-you-until-you-teach-it", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://www.overfiftiesaiacademy.com/hubfs/Over%20Fifties%20AI%20Academy%20Logo%20(trans).png" }, "name" : "Over Fifties AI Academy" } } ```