Can AI Really Improve My Writing? My Initial Findings

Most of us don’t speak English, or at least not very fluently. I can speak English but not 100%. I think my competence is only 90% at best and sometimes I write bilingually. It's kind of hard to tidy it up in an article, especially if I expect everyone to understand it until I finally learned about AI Prompt.

Basically, what I read or learn is quite simple; I ask AI to pay attention and “refine” my writing so that it is not too complex or redundant; sometimes we experience it and it is not fun.

My prompt goes like this, and it works on Bard or ChatGPT :

Proofread my writing below. Fix grammar and spelling mistakes and make suggestions that will improve the clarity of my writing, but make it informal.

I’ll give you an example. The text that I’m going to tidy up is this:

But you might get a lot of profit from a rare car without an engine or transmission. In some news, I read that some rare cars, like the Ferrari 250 GTO and the Lamborghini Miura, can sell for millions of dollars even if it’s just the chassis and body. Basically, it happens because you can’t buy it anymore; what’s left will be more expensive, and those chassis will be high in price because the demand is high.

Other rare classics are the same; those Dodge Charger bodyshell and chassis might be expensive now because it’s rare to have; gone are the days where you could get one for $300 like in the 1970s, even without an engine or transmission, such a car commands a high price.

Basically, it depends on what we’re talking about; common cars without an engine and transmission might not be valuable, while some rare cars might be priced high; it all depends on the demand.

This is quite neat, but not perfect; there are several redundancies in words that are not pleasant to read and the use of words that are not quite appropriate. With that, I give the finished result:

You might actually make a decent profit from a rare car even if it doesn’t have an engine or transmission. I read somewhere that rare cars like the Ferrari 250 GTO or Lamborghini Miura can sell for millions of dollars, even if it’s just the chassis and body. Why? Simple—because you can’t buy them anymore. What’s left becomes insanely valuable. Those chassis skyrocket in price because the demand is huge, and the supply? Basically non-existent.

It’s the same deal with other rare classics. Take Dodge Chargers, for example. The bodyshell and chassis alone are worth a fortune now because they’re so rare. Gone are the days when you could pick one up for $300, like back in the ’70s. Even without an engine or transmission, cars like that command some seriously high prices.

At the end of the day, it really depends on what kind of car we’re talking about. Common cars without an engine or transmission aren’t going to be worth much. But when it comes to rare cars? That’s a whole different story—it's all about demand.

The final result is quite neat, at least 85% and you only need to tidy up some words that are too often used by AI but the number is not much. It happens because the input data comes from you; AI does not create the words and it only tidies them up so that the final result looks neat and not "AI-like,” like if you take the writing from the prompt.

What I noticed is some words that are written passively in English; maybe that is the limitation of AI and basically you just need to edit it again; it’s easier than having to tidy it up yourself and faster; at least you don’t need to waste a lot of time editing.

In addition, you can also make some of the writing in your article easier to read or understand, especially if you get the source from the Internet, rather than being confused by the words I suppose asking AI to fix it is a good idea as long as you know what you are doing.

The only downside is that you need a decent grasp of English to spot words that don’t quite fit and need replacing. But honestly, the AI I used already churned out stuff that felt pretty close to human writing, so it’s not a big deal. If you understand English, you’ll notice those issues easily—awkward or repetitive words just jump out at you, especially since AI tends to sprinkle in some redundant phrases here and there.

It’s an easy task and those prompts are not rigid; you can change them according to your needs. Innovation sometimes comes from creativity and I invite you to modify it; at least it is a tool that makes our work easier.