Summary
- The new Bing, your AI-powered copilot for the web, is now in preview, and you might be surprised at how much it can help us be better at our craft of communications.
- These are some starter prompts to ask Bing, which have helped me and my team in our work over the past few weeks.
- If you like the answers you find with Bing, remember to follow-up with the source links for more information.
- The new Bing is in preview, and we’re continuing to take feedback and apply those learnings to improve the experience over time.
We’re in the thick of it, for sure. As communications professionals, we’re figuring out what this new age of AI means for us, for our craft, while at the same time trying to explain AI to the world.
In speaking at an event this week in New York on this topic, one of the things I reflected on was the need to bring people along on this change curve. You might start off on the curve like “nope” – as soon as you start seeing stories about these AI advancements, your response is that this is not good for our profession. But then as you dig into it, you feel maybe it’s not a “nope” and move up the curve to “there’s hope.” There are all sorts of things I could do! After all, one of our secret powers as communicators has always been language. And you have this moment and realize, you can accelerate this secret power with AI.
Here’s how I’ve been doing just that with these prompts using the new AI-powered Bing. The results were crazy impressive. Try for yourself by signing up for the preview at bing.com/new and remember to give feedback directly to Bing so we can continue to improve the experience.
Useful information to get started
- Choose a conversation style: “More Creative,” “More Balanced” or “More Precise”
- The new Bing won’t hesitate to offer some follow-up questions to help hone in on the answer you’re looking for. For example, when you’re using the new Bing to do idea generation, it’s helpful to follow-up by asking it to “give me a few more.”
- Related to that, don’t leave Bing hanging! It may have an ancillary topic related to the topic you’re asking about.
- Bing will always show you where it’s getting its information, so if you like some of the answers you’re getting and want more details, don’t forget to check out the sources that Bing is pulling from.
- Reminder! Avoid putting confidential information in the chat.
Next, on to the prompts.
Media interview prep
This first example comes from The Wall Street Journal reporter Joanna Stern. To prepare for an interview with our Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Joanna used the new Bing to help with preparing interview questions. Here’s what she asked Bing:
- “In the voice of Joanna Stern, generate a list of 10 interview questions for Satya Nadella about AI and the new Bing”
- “Answer question 5 in the voice of <person>”
Since then, I’ve been using similar prompts to prepare for media interviews. For example, in preparing for this On With Kara Swisher podcast episode, here’s a prompt that I used:
- “Help me prepare for a podcast interview with Kara Swisher. The topic we’ve agreed to discuss is the rise of Artificial Intelligence tools and services. Based on her most recent writing and podcasts, give me 10 questions I should anticipate.”
Remember, you have enough time to make sure Bing is prepared – so it can help to first ask if it’s familiar with Kara Swisher and her interview style. Then add more details – who is she talking to? Then fire the prompt about the 10 questions.
Media coverage snapshots
It’s been a crazy few weeks of news here at Microsoft and I’ve started using Bing to help me get quick snapshots of media coverage to see how news is landing in the moment. Here are a few examples I pulled recently:
- “What’s the latest news about <X> today?”
- “What’s the overall tone of these stories?”
- “How does this compare with news about <Y> in the same time period?”
This is not a substitute for deeper measurement or analysis, but it’s a surprisingly good first snap when you need something now.
Social media post inspiration
Bing chat is also a great brainstorm idea generator. We’ve experimented using it to get inspiration for our social media posts, especially with “More Creative” mode. Here are some examples that my team has experimented with:
- “Generate a few tweets that include <X> information and uses a <Y> tone” (such as “lighthearted tone”)
- “Write a LinkedIn post for this blog, <X>”
- “Generate a few tweet ideas for <company> about <product feature>”
- “Take the following information and turn it into a <X> character tweet / LinkedIn post: <copy and paste text>,” then “Can you write it again but make it more engaging?”
These initial prompts are usually followed by “give me a few more versions.”
Headline generation
There are days when I spend a lot of time writing (and rewriting) the body of a blog post, finally get it to a good place and only then start to wonder, what is my headline? By this point I’ve used up every ounce of creativity and begrudgingly write something somewhat coherent and feel slightly bad about myself. But these days, I feel less bad. While I still spend a lot of time writing (I really do love writing!) now with the new Bing, I’ve been using this prompt to help me generate headlines (a type of writing that I love less). Here’s what I did:
- “Suggest a few variations of headlines for the following,”
- Copy your text and paste it to the Bing chat
FAQ generation
FAQs is another type of writing I’ve been keen to accelerate with AI. Here’s how I’ve done that:
- “Suggest five FAQs for <text or link>”
- “Give me a few more”
I hope these prompt examples help you kickstart your own questions and interactions with this incredible new tool.
Happy experimenting!