Get closer to the responses you want without the constant prompt hacking.

Hallucinating, sucking up and providing way too many bullet points and emoji in the response when you just asked a simple question: The sins of AI chat tools are many.

Spending precious moments searching for and refining prompts that will get you to the right answer in the way you want it delivered is one way to go, but there’s a more sophisticated, permanent method hiding in the depths of your favorite AI chat’s toolkit.

AI chat tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude AI and others have options in their settings that serve as permanent instruction manuals for how they interact with you. Using these features can give the tools specific instructions that might lead to better outcomes and less frustration, but first, you have to find them. 

Here’s how to customize your AI to give you the best responses in the way you want them.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

To access all of these personalization settings, start by clicking your username in the open chat window of most AI chat tools. You’ll find something in the settings list usually called “personalization” or “personal intelligence.” This is the starting point for all AI chat customizations — your command center for the best prompt results possible.

ChatGPT offers a range of options for customizing your experience with the tool, including how “warm” and “enthusiastic” the responses in your chats might be — aka, how much butt kissing you’d like in your interactions — as well as whether you want to nix emoji use altogether or how you’d like ChatGPT to refer to you in your sessions.

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