Want a personalised AI chatbot that's fine-tuned for your projects? If you have ChatGPT Plus (the paid version), take advantage of the custom instructions feature.
The paid version of ChatGPT has a custom instructions feature, allowing you to fine tune it for more personalised results. It works best for rules you want it to always follow.
The instructions will be applied to every new chat, and you can only turn it off and on for new chat threads, i.e., it won’t apply to ones you’ve already started.
How to use it
You can access the custom instructions by selecting the three dots at the bottom of the left menu pane:
For learning projects, you could include information about the audience/learners, tone of voice or theories/frameworks.
I used customer instructions to help write some of the content on this website. First, I asked ChatGPT to for rules I could use based on some criteria I gave it. Here are three examples it made:
{Active Voice} — Construct sentences predominantly in the active voice to foster clarity and directness, avoiding passive constructions that might dilute the impact of the message.
{Succinct} — Craft content that is succinct yet rich in information, avoiding verbosity and ensuring that each sentence contributes meaningfully to the central message or topic.
{Reader-Centric Focus} — Keep the focus on the reader's needs, interests, and potential benefits, ensuring that the content is designed to address their queries and provide valuable insights or solutions.
I put these rules in the custom instructions along with some context about the website and the audience.
Considerations
There are three things to remember when using custom instructions:
Instructions need to be specific, informative and clear — learn more on the prompting page.
When switched on, they will be applied to all new chats and the entire chat thread. So, only use instructions that you want to apply to every response.
Avoid putting personal or sensitive information.
I use custom instructions more for longer projects that require multiple chat threads. As my work involves a variety of projects for different clients, I generally don't use custom instructions — I prefer the flexibility of prompting where you can iterate the AI's responses.
To decide whether custom instructions is suitable for you, consider the pros and cons below.
PROS:
It can save time and effort if there are instructions or context you tend to use in multiple chat threads.
If you get the instructions right, ChatGPT's outputs can be more consistent and relevant.
ChatGPT can help you write custom instructions
CONS:
You'll need to test out the custom instructions until you get them right — remember they only apply to new chats.
It can be too focused on the instructions you've given it, making it harder to get more varied or creative answers.
There's a limit of 1500 characters per box.
Putting information about yourself is a potential data security risk. Also, this information may not be relevant to your projects.
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