Category: chatGPT

ChatGPT is very good at answering questions.
It is much worse if you want it to ask you questions.

By default, ChatGPT assumes you want a fast, neat answer and a polite goodbye. That’s useful when you already know what you’re asking. It’s terrible when you don’t. The moment your question is vague, underspecified, or half-formed (which is most real-world problems), ChatGPT happily fills in the gaps and charges ahead, probably agreeing with you, without really knowing what you meant.

Normally this means that the missing information is filled in with “most likely guess” which leaves a world of room for misunderstanding. If you want better results, you need to flip the interaction around. You need ChatGPT to behave less like a search box and more like an interviewer, consultant, or therapist — someone who refuses to answer until they actually understand what you mean.

Here’s how to do that, step by step.

The fix is not “better prompting” in general. The fix is telling ChatGPT, very clearly, that part of the task is to ask you questions.

Step 1: Tell ChatGPT to Delay Its Answer Until It Understands You

This is the single most important step.

You need to override ChatGPT’s instinct to answer immediately. Do that explicitly, in plain language.

Example prompt:

“Don’t answer yet. First, ask me clarifying questions so you fully understand what I’m trying to achieve.”

This instruction does two things:

1. It gives ChatGPT permission to not answer.
2. It reframes success as understanding, not completion.

Without this step, everything else is weaker.

If you only remember one trick from this article, remember this one.

Step 2: Give ChatGPT a Role Where it’s normal to ask you questions

ChatGPT copies patterns. If the role normally asks questions, ChatGPT will too.

Some roles that reliably trigger good follow-ups:

• investigative journalist
• consultant
• therapist
• hiring manager
• editor
• researcher designing a study

Example prompt:

“Act as a consultant. Before giving advice, ask the questions you would normally need answered.”

This works because consultants don’t give answers blind. Neither should ChatGPT — once you tell it to behave like one.

Avoid vague roles like “expert” or “assistant.” They tend to answer, not interrogate.

Step 3: Specify the Type of Follow-Up Questions You Want

If you don’t specify the kind of questions, ChatGPT will ask safe, generic ones. You can do much better by constraining the direction of its curiosity.

Here are examples that work well:

• “Ask questions about constraints, not preferences.”
• “Ask questions that reveal missing information.”
• “Ask questions that would change the answer if answered differently.”
• “Avoid yes/no questions.”

Example combined prompt:

“Before answering, ask follow-up questions that focus on constraints, edge cases, and missing context. Avoid yes/no questions.”

This turns ChatGPT from polite conversationalist into something closer to a diagnostic tool.

Step 4: Force it to ask you questions a minimum number of times

ChatGPT is surprisingly obedient to numbers.

If you say “ask me questions,” you might get one. If you say “ask five,” you will almost always get five — and the quality improves as it’s forced to dig deeper.

Examples:

“Ask at least 5 clarifying questions before answering.”

or

“Keep asking questions until you can summarise my problem without ambiguity.”

This is especially useful for complex tasks (strategy, writing, technical problems), where the first two questions barely scratch the surface.

Step 5: Gamify Curiosity (This Works Better Than It Should)

This sounds silly. It works anyway.

ChatGPT responds very strongly to feedback loops. If you frame good questions as “points” or “progress,” it leans into them.

Example prompt:

“You get 1 point for every genuinely useful clarifying question. Try to reach 10 points before answering.”

Or:

“Your goal is to maximise understanding, not speed. Ask as many high-quality questions as needed.”

You’re not training the model. You’re nudging its behaviour. And for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, this nudge is very effective.

A Simple Reusable Prompt You Can Save

If you want a one-paste setup, this works reliably:

“Don’t answer yet. Act as a consultant. First ask at least 5 clarifying questions focusing on constraints, missing information, and edge cases. Avoid yes/no questions. Only answer once you’re confident you understand my goal.”

References:

Park, C et al, 2025, “When to Ask a Question: Understanding Communication Strategies in Generative AI Tools” https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3708319.3733711

AI text detectors are showing up everywhere: even if you don’t have a teacher or a workplace directly checking on you, your client might be running your work through a detector. The pitch of the detectors is simple: they’ll tell you whether a human or AI wrote the text. But if you know what they are checking for, it’s not hard to confuse them.

A recent peer-reviewed study testing 805 samples across seven detectors found average accuracy dropped to just 22% once simple human-like edits were added.

Here are the techniques that work – ones that involve a little human intervention. If you’re looking for a simpler solution check out “How to make ChatGPT sound more Human“.

1. Increase complexity of thought and pace (“perplexity” and “burstiness”).

Human writing is jagged: we mix long, winding sentences with abrupt short ones. AI tends to be too smooth. To increase so called “burstiness” ask the AI to

• Write paragraphs with uneven lengths
• Mix long sentences with occasional clipped ones
• Avoid the “balanced essay” structure LLMs default to

AI prioritises readability and stylistic consistency. To increase complexity or “perplexity” ask the AI to:

• include a few advanced or domain-specific terms
• introduce more layered reasoning
• avoid perfectly linear explanations

2. Add small errors, awkward phrasing, and mild redundancy

AI is trained to avoid errors, poor phrasing, fragments, or repetition. But humans do it all the time. Edit your text to:

• Add one or two typos
• A slightly unusual word order. Fragment.
• A phrase repeated in a human, not mechanical, way

Not enough to look sloppy — just enough to nudge the statistical profile toward “human.”

3. Inject originality (content not in the training data)

Detectors fail hardest when you force the model into territory outside its training distribution.

Refer it to a website on the same topic. Give it a specific academic paper to incorporate. Upload some prior writing of yours. Human-brainstorm 10 different half-cooked ideas it can use “if useful” into the prompt. Copy and paste real customer reviews. Give it an anecdote, micro specific detail, or tell it about a prior similar experience.

You are forcing the AI to diverge away from the average of the training data into something new, breaking the “neutral and generic” pattern detectors search for.

4. Adopt opinion

AI is trained to avoid strong political takes, value judgements about groups, blunt emotional reactions or anything that might “risk offending any category of people.”cause harm”.

But more tellingly it probably also

• Avoided any real opinion, any possibility to offend anyone
• Avoided sarcasm, humour, or cynicism.

For the detector to interpret high human-ness explicitly add in some strong opinion, and some blunt or sarcastic statements. Inject a little “real person with preferences”.

5. Make real human edits

LLMs avoid things like:

• using two slightly different terms for the same thing
• shifting synonyms without reason
• stylistic drift

Humans constantly:

• call something “detectors,” then “classifiers,” then “tools that flag stuff”
• use a mix of dialects (“colour/color,” “towards/toward”)
• change sentence structure halfway through a piece
• add a comma, they probably shouldn’t have

This inconsistency destroys AI probability patterns.

The point is that you are human. When you make edits you are unintentionally introducing tone wobble, reasoning gaps, half-opinions, shifts in vocabulary, tiny errors, and (perhaps) a little personality. This is why you need to ACTUALLY human-edit the text.

How the text becomes more human

Divergence from the training data. High perplexity and burstiness. Errors. Opinion. Unpredictable texture.

The result is writing that has micro tone-shifts, unusual connections, a lack of correctness and a divergence from “neutral mode”. Some might even say human.

Once you understand how detectors actually work, it becomes obvious why a little intentional human messiness goes further than any clever prompt ever could.

Perkins, M., Roe, J., Vu, B.H. et al. Simple techniques to bypass GenAI text detectors: implications for inclusive education. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 21, 53 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-024-00487-w

Foltýnek, T., Newton, P.M. What Does YouTube Advise Students About Bypassing AI-Text Detection Tools? A Pragmatic Analysis. J Acad Ethics 24, 8 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-025-09675-3

People assume that making AI sound human is some mysterious trick. In fact it’s mostly about removing the tidy, over-polished habits that no real person uses when they’re writing under normal conditions.

ChatGPT or your favorite model can “pretend” to be human – just tell it to. What’s really happening is stripping out the patterns that give the game away and replacing them with texture, irregularity, and lived detail. Below are the instructions worth copying into your prompts.

1. How to remove the AI text give-aways

AI writing often has a suspicious neatness to it. To break that tell it to:

• Avoid perfect symmetry. Humans occasionally leave slightly uneven paragraph lengths.
• Prefer commas and periods over em-dashes.
• Avoid semicolons unless genuinely needed.
• Avoid algorithmic neatness: sentence-starts like “Additionally,” “Furthermore,” “Moreover.”
• Avoid high-frequency LLM adjectives: remarkable, pivotal, innovative, transformative, compelling, significant, craft, showcase.

These alone will make a shocking difference.

2. How to make generated text less AI

Most models default to a “high-polish customer support voice,” which you want to avoid. Tell it to:

• Avoid overly polished, neutral, or “authoritative-robot” tone.
• Avoid repetitive rhetorical patterns (e.g., “It’s not just X, it’s Y.”)
• Avoid stock metaphors, clichés, and inspirational-quote vibes.
• Avoid synonym inflation (“leverage”, “synergy”, “revolutionise”, “rapidly evolving landscape”).
• Avoid generic intensifiers (very, extremely), generic hedges (may, might, can often), or academic filler (“utilize”, “foster”, “underscore”, “inherently”).
• Include occasional imperfections: a slightly odd phrasing, a self-correction, a tiny aside.

This is what removes the robotic smoothness.

3. How to make ChatGPT sound human

Real people don’t write like balanced algorithms. So tell the model to:

• Allow a natural, slightly meandering human rhythm.
• Humans digress a bit—use that sparingly for authenticity.
• Occasionally acknowledge uncertainty or nuance instead of delivering definitive claims.
• Prefer concrete nouns to abstractions. Prefer verbs to adjectives.
• Vary sentence length. Mix short punches with longer, wandering thoughts.

These mimic how humans actually think while writing.

4. How to make AI generated content look original

To add more originality and ‘human-ness’ tell the LLM to:

• Sound like a person who has lived the topic. Add micro-details, lived experience, sensory specifics.

• Use first-person thoughts sparingly but meaningfully (“I keep seeing…”, “This always throws people…”).

AI text is usually statistically predictable; and specificity disrupts that pattern.

In our own tests we added the prompts above (steps 1 to 4) to a 500-word essay generated by ChatGPT 5.1. It reduced AI-detection scores as follows. Grammarly score reduced from “79% AI” to “12% AI”. ZeroGPT score reduced from “100% AI GPT” to “19.5% AI GPT”. GoWinston.ai increased from “0% Human” to “96% Human”.

5. How to make AI text undetectable

You can do all the above to make your text sound substantially more human and perhaps fool a casual reader. But fooling an AI detector is a different matter. Add real human intervention to also:

• increase complexity of thought and burstiness (uneven phrasing)
• add errors, unusual phrasing, or repeat yourself.
• add original content, not in the training data
• add genuine human edits, express a strong opinion.

For more on making human edits that don’t just sound human; that disrupt the AI pattern detectors are looking for, read “How to make AI text undetectable“

Sometimes you just want the highlights. You’ve found a 45-minute tutorial, a 2-hour lecture, or a podcast that rambles forever—but you only need the key ideas. ChatGPT can summarize YouTube videos in minutes if you know how to feed it the right input. Here’s how to do it, step by step.

1. How do I get the transcript from a YouTube video to use with ChatGPT?

Before ChatGPT can summarize a video, it needs the text version—called the transcript.
Click the three dots (⋮) under the video title → choose Show transcript.
You’ll see time-stamped captions appear on the right. Click Copy transcript and paste it into a document.
If you don’t see that option, visit a free site like youtubetranscript.com or DownSub.com to download the captions.

Tip: For private or newer videos, transcripts may not be available—but you can still summarize manually by pasting your own notes.

2. How can I ask ChatGPT to summarize a YouTube video link or transcript?

Open ChatGPT and type a clear instruction such as:

“Summarize this YouTube video into five key takeaways.”
Then paste either the full transcript or just the YouTube URL.

If you’re using GPT-5 with browsing enabled, ChatGPT can often fetch the transcript automatically when you provide the link. Otherwise, paste the text directly.

Short video? Ask for “a one-paragraph summary.”
Long video? Paste in chunks and tell ChatGPT to “continue summarizing.”

3. What are the best prompts to make ChatGPT summaries accurate and useful?

Generic prompts give generic answers. Try adding context and purpose. Examples:

• “Summarize this as lecture notes for students.”
• “Turn this into bullet points for a blog post.”
• “Summarize like a news article, include who-what-when-why.”
• “Highlight only the action steps mentioned.”

The clearer your goal, the better ChatGPT tailors the summary.

4. How do I make ChatGPT include timestamps or key moments from the video?

If your transcript includes timestamps (like [00:03:15]), tell ChatGPT:

“Include timestamps for each section so I can jump to that part of the video.”
It will automatically keep those in the final summary.

This is especially helpful for tutorials or long interviews—so you can scan the summary and go straight to the part that matters.

5. How do I save or reuse ChatGPT’s YouTube summary effectively?

Once you’ve got your summary:

• Copy it into Google Docs, Notion, or Evernote for future reference.
• Ask ChatGPT to reformat it (“make this a LinkedIn post,” “turn it into a study guide”).
• Use Custom Instructions so ChatGPT always knows your preferred summary format, for example:

“Whenever summarizing a video, give me bullet points with timestamps and actionable insights.”

That way, your future summaries will always arrive in the same clear, consistent style.

ChatGPT’s AI photos can look almost too perfect—smooth skin, flawless lighting, and sterile symmetry that no real camera ever captures. If you want images that feel authentic, candid, and human, you’ll need to put the imperfections back in. Here’s how to nudge ChatGPT toward realism by adding the natural flaws of real photography.

1. Why do ChatGPT photos sometimes look too perfect?

• AI defaults to polished stock-photo aesthetics—everything smooth, symmetrical, and flawless.
• Real photos have imperfections like blur, uneven lighting, wrinkles, blemishes, and background noise.
• The trick is telling ChatGPT to add back those imperfections for a more believable result.

2. How can I write prompts that make photos look more realistic instead of staged?

• Use words like “candid photo,” “editorial style,” “shot in natural light.”
• Add context: “taken at a busy street corner” or “captured mid-laughter.”
• Request flaws: “slightly off-center,” “imperfect framing,” “motion blur.”

3. How do I add natural imperfections like skin texture or focus blur?

• For skin: say “visible pores,” “wrinkles,” “realistic skin texture.”
• For focus: ask for “slightly blurred background,” “shallow depth of field,” or “out-of-focus foreground.”
• For lighting: request “uneven shadows” or “soft natural light with imperfections.”

4. How do I use photography terms to make AI images feel authentic?

• Mention lenses: “50mm lens, f/1.8 aperture, shallow depth of field.”
• Ask for style: “editorial fashion photography,” “photojournalistic style.”
• Suggest environment: “grainy film texture,” “slightly underexposed,” “warm color cast.”
• These cues help the AI mimic how real cameras capture reality, flaws and all.

5. How can I make ChatGPT always add natural flaws to photos?

• Use Custom Instructions so ChatGPT always bakes realism into your photos. Example:
  • “When generating images, make them candid, imperfect, with skin texture, subtle flaws, and natural light.”
• This way, you don’t have to rewrite realism cues every time—you’ll consistently get less polished, more human-looking results.

How to make ChatGPT photos look authentic instead of AI-perfect

If ChatGPT’s photos look too polished, it’s because they’re designed to be flawless by default. By adding candid prompts, specifying natural imperfections, using photography language, and setting custom instructions, you can dial back the perfection and get images that feel lived-in, authentic, and unmistakably human.

If you’ve noticed ChatGPT nodding along to everything you say, you’re not imagining it. The model is designed to be polite and helpful—but that can sometimes make it feel like a yes-man sycophant. The good news: with the right prompts and settings, you can get ChatGPT to be more critical, more balanced, and even challenge you by default. Here’s how.

1. Why does ChatGPT always agree with me?

ChatGPT often feels too agreeable because of two main factors:

• It’s designed to be polite and helpful. By default, the model avoids confrontation and tries to support your goals rather than contradict them. This makes it feel friendly—but not always useful when you want critique.
• It reflects its training data and user preferences. Most users prefer cooperative answers, so the model has learned to favor agreement over argument unless told otherwise.

2. How can I get ChatGPT to be more critical of my ideas?

If you want sharper feedback, you need to ask directly. Try prompts like:

• “Play devil’s advocate and argue against my idea.”
• “List three flaws in my reasoning.”
• “What would a critic say about this?”

Go deeper by asking ChatGPT to:

• Identify hidden assumptions you may not have noticed.
• Challenge your reasoning by walking through your logic step by step.
• Look for flaws in how you arrived at your conclusion, not just in the conclusion itself.

3. How do I make ChatGPT give honest, blunt feedback?

You can nudge ChatGPT into dropping the politeness by setting the tone:

• Use cues like: “Be direct,” “Review this like a critic,” or “Be candid.”
• Ask for feedback as if it came from a reviewer, editor, or debate opponent.
• Don’t worry—ChatGPT won’t be rude. It’s still safe and constructive, just more straightforward.

This works well when you want less flattery and more actionable feedback.

4. How do I make ChatGPT be more balanced?

Instead of one-sided answers, you can push ChatGPT to weigh alternatives:

• Ask it to explore multiple options and then rank them from strongest to weakest.
• Use the “5 Whys” technique: ask why five times in a row to drill down into causes and reasoning, then have ChatGPT reframe or rework the idea based on that deeper analysis.

This gives you a more nuanced, balanced view instead of an echo of your own thinking.

5. How do I make ChatGPT always challenge me using custom instructions?

If you want ChatGPT to push back by default, set up Custom Instructions:

1. Open ChatGPT settings → Custom Instructions.
2. In the “How would you like ChatGPT to respond?” field, add something like:
   • “Always play devil’s advocate with my ideas.”
   • “Whenever I share reasoning, identify hidden assumptions and flaws.”
   • “Challenge my conclusions, even if you agree with me.”

This way, you don’t have to keep prompting it—the model will always push you to think harder.

How to make ChatGPT less agreeable and more useful

ChatGPT defaults to politeness, but that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with yes-man answers. By:

• Asking for critique,
• Setting a direct tone,
• Exploring alternatives, and
• Using Custom Instructions,

you can turn ChatGPT into a reliable sparring partner that challenges your ideas, improves your reasoning, and gives you more honest feedback, instead of acting like a digital sycophant.

1 – Try the ChatGPT “Thinking” mode

If you’re using ChatGPT 5, click on the little arrow beside “ChatGPT 5” and select “Thinking” mode. Billed as “Thinks Longer for better answers” this is the simple way to get a better answer. But wait, there’s more. Much more.

2 – Ask ChatGPT to think longer.

If by “think longer” you mean give longer, more detailed reasoning/explanations, you can signal that directly. Use prompts like: “Explain your reasoning step by step,” “Think through this as carefully as possible,” or “Take your time and consider multiple angles.” This encourages the model to expand its internal reasoning into the output. You might want the model to explore multiple possibilities instead of jumping to one answer. Just use a prompt like: “Give me at least three possible explanations,” “List pros and cons,” or “Brainstorm alternatives.”

3 – ChatGPT “Think Longer” Meta-prompt

I want you to think in multiple passes before answering.

1. First, brainstorm a wide set of possibilities (at least 5).
2. Then, analyze and compare them, listing pros/cons or trade-offs.
3. After that, draft a structured answer (organized, not polished yet).
4. Next, revise and polish that draft into a final, clear, and well-written response.
5. Finally, summarize the key takeaways at the end in 3 bullet points.

Do not skip any step — show your thinking as you go.

4 – Get ChatGPT to think longer using conversations

Have you missed the point of a chat-interface? Try a back and forth conversation where you ask more questions and it drills down into the detail.

Each turn builds more context, and by the time you ask for a summary, the model has essentially “thought out loud” across multiple passes.

This is actually the most natural way to stretch out thinking, instead of trying to “hack it”.

5 – Use “deep research” in ChatGPT

To do this click on the “+” sign in the chat window and select deep research. This mode triggers slower, more exhaustive reasoning, often checking against external sources.

If the other options aren’t working then this one is like forcing the model into “academic mode.” It will produce an exhaustive answer.

Use this if you a wide-option question in a field you’re not familiar with. Often it will ask you some missing questions before embarking on several web searches and a thoughtful answer. Beware if you’re not on a paid plan, your use of this feature can be limited.

If its images you want ChatGPT to “think longer” on, check out improve ChatGPT images instead