Spent 6 hours trying to get an AI to write a simple email template and it kept adding fluff I didn't ask for

I know everyone says AI saves time but my experience has been the opposite so far. Last week I needed a basic follow up email for a client and I tried three different tools to draft it. Each one gave me three paragraphs of marketing speak when all I wanted was two sentences. I ended up rewriting the thing from scratch in like 5 minutes. Has anyone else found that these tools just overcomplicate simple tasks or am I doing something wrong?

2 comments

2 Comments

joel_young26d ago

I mean maybe the issue isn't the AI itself but the way we're trained to think about writing in the first place. Like all those years of school where teachers told us to make every email sound professional and polished, maybe that's why these tools default to fluff. When I asked for a simple follow up, the AI gave me what it thought a "professional" email should look like because that's what most people have trained it on. But we're asking for something totally different - we want efficient and direct, not impressive and wordy. It's like the AI is trying to impress an imaginary boss instead of just saying "hey, checking in on that thing we talked about.

mark_smith5927d ago

Fair enough but if you get specific about what you want in the prompt it works way better for me.