How To Talk to AI — Use My Voice

Look at the newsfeed on LinkedIn. 

It’s 90% useless AI-generated blech. It’s carpeted with beige and unremarkable sameness. The posts start the same way. Look the same. Include the same emojis and bullets. 

But every once in a while, you come across one that hits different. Why? Because it sounds and looks like a real person created it. Therefore, it was either handwritten by a person or created by someone who knows how to utilize the LLM effectively.

In this case, effectively means “sounds like me.”

One of the most powerful things you can do with an LLM is teach it to sound like you. If you’ve written articles, newsletters, blog posts, or even just sent emails, you already have a dataset.

Feed that to the model.

The more you share, the better it gets at sounding like you. Or at least, sounding like a human.

Boss directive:

“I need to reply to a billion emails today. Help me.”

Prompt:

“You are my writing assistant. 
Attached is a bunch of email replies and other snippets that I’ve written in the past. Use these as a reference for tone, style, format, and how I say things. Adhere to this.
Now you’ve read many of my previous emails, posts, and replies. You know my voice — it’s clear, thoughtful, confident, conversational, and a little dry. I avoid buzzwords and prefer simple, precise language. Occasionally, I make a joke.  
Now write email replies in my voice for all of the attached emails. Keep it warm, appreciative, and conversational. Use my phrasing and cadence. Don’t ever make stuff up. Ask me questions if you need context or I must answer a question.”

Next up: Some final thoughts.