Analysis | Discover the hidden rules behind AI. Then use them to rewrite this article.

Chatbots like ChatGPT are powerful because of their simplicity: if you ask pretty much anything, you’ll get an answer. However, the answer you receive depends on much more than just your input.

Behind the scenes, artificial intelligence companies invisibly add thousands of words of instructions to every conversation you have with a chatbot to guide its behavior. This includes phrases like “Strive for readable, accessible answers.” and “You must avoid providing…extensive direct quotations for copyright reasons.” Some can seem bizarre. The system prompt in OpenAI’s Codex coding wizard includes the command: “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or others…”