Writing and editing using AI

Copilot can support you with everyday writing and editing tasks, from improving an email or adapting content for a particular audience to proofreading and summarising longer documents. By giving Copilot clear instructions about what you need, you can quickly create a useful starting point which you can then review and refine.

Tips for using AI tools to help with your writing

Email clarity

You can use Copilot to help you improve the clarity and focus of your emails. You could write a draft email, then copy this into Copilot and ask it to more it more clear, more concise, or more professional.

An example prompt for this could be:

Rewrite this email to be clear, professional, and friendly while keeping it under 150 words.

Adapt to your audience

Copilot can help you to reword your content based on who will be reading it. For example, you may want to simplify your communications to a high level overview for certain groups, whereas others may want a more in depth response, with clear guidelines.

By providing Copilot with the text, you can ask it to be adapted to the group you're targeting. An example prompt for this could be:

Rewrite this policy update in plain English for undergraduate students.

Proofread your work

You can ask AI to proofread your work, to identify any errors in grammar, spelling mistakes, or inconsistencies in your language. By uploading a document into Copilot, you can ask it to review the entire document in context.

An example prompt for this could be:

Act as a proofreader and identify any errors or unclear wording in this document.

It's important to always be aware of the content you're adding to Copilot, so don’t copy any information that could be sensitive or personal into Copilot. For tips on anonymising data, see the AI Fundamentals online course, or the AI security Help pages.

Create a summary

By providing text or documents to Copilot, you can ask it to create a high level summary, or identify key areas that would be relevant to your role. This can give you areas to focus on at a glance and help cut through to give an initial overview before you review the content more deeply.

An example prompt for this could be:

Review this report and identify areas that are more relevant to a Digital Skills Developer. I am particularly interested in AI policy across UK universities, and research uses of AI.

Collate information from public reports

If you have several reports to read, Copilot can help you to create a high level summary, to give you some top level insights before you read through. You can copy content from publicly available reports (for example, National Student Survey data, JISC reports, new Department for Education guidance), and ask Copilot to provide a quick summary.

An example prompt could be:

Here are three recently published reports around student use of AI. Identify key themes, actions, risks, and recommendations.

It's always important to remember that AI isn't perfect, and may miss certain things that are relevant to your department or role, so be sure to check the outputs and don't rely on AI to complete all the reading for you. Treat it more like a bicycle; it can help you get to places more quickly and easily, but you still need to put in the work to reach the final destination.