AI assistants and generative chatbots are often used to save time and improve efficiency of tasks. While they have a wide-range of features and a touch of humanised conversational flows, one thing users face is the tedious task of repetitive prompting. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok and countless others, all require detailed prompts for a desirable results. Building your own AI assistant, as per Harvard Business Review (HBR), can truly save your time and increase productive efforts.
Why are AI-assistants used?
AI assistants have a wide user-base and can be used by everyone, right from a college student trying to finish an assignment to an consulting analyst at a firm. Premium versions of these constantly-updating Gen AI’s may have a higher level of adaptation of its user’s needs but they all serve these broader purposes.
HBR reiterates the primary function of these assistants such as writing and marketing communication. Creating an assistant, rather than relying on individual prompts, enables you to establish guidelines and examples upfront, eliminating the need to repeatedly provide them whenever you require writing or revisions.
Further, these assistants can be a great tool for troubleshooting assistance and client servicing which provide personalised answers with a faster response time. Increasing productivity, AI assistants can also easily held its users prioritise, manage and construct their timelines with certain models enabled with real-time notetaking features.
How to create your custom AI-assistant?
Once the purpose of creating the assistant has been defined, you can narrow down on the tools you wish to build on. Further integrating conversation flows, running a testing version and improving it as you go.
Choose a platform
ChatGPT offers custom voice assistance and with live access to the web, it is the only model in the race. But if writing is your primary use, tools like Claude easily analyse your writing style and give responses that align with it. A key takeaway must remain that these Gen AI models can only produce content from what they know already. The stagnant knowledge base hinders the usability and requires the user to perform fact-checks.
Experiment and enable
The best prompts for an AI assistant include a background that gives the tool a context for generating text. Offer prompts in bullet points and have a clear conversation flows rather than giving a vague response. While it will require a degree of trial and error, it will give you the best results. As a user, you don’t need to know coding on Python to build your AI assistant but integrating Application Programming Interface (APIs) will allow you add voice inputs for a robust experience.
Customise instructions
Instructions will be the rulebook of your AI assistant. The more specific the instructions, the more desirable results will be. Mention the purpose, role and sketch a persona of the required role you wish to fulfill as a user. Instructions must include varied details like the desired output and the form in which you need it. Moreover, specifying goals for the assistant provides you clearer responses. Offering background files such as previous work-samples and references make the assistant more powerful and perform as per expectations.
It is hard to say that the model will be perfect right away but with repeated usage, further customisation and steady improvement will achieve your desired goals. Spending time to create a customised assistant is less time consuming than hunting for the perfect prompts making automation easier.
