Joel Lewenstein, head of product design at Anthropic, recently crawled under his new home to adjust the irrigation system when he encountered a mystery: the device's buttons were wrong. Instead of scouring the internet for a product manual, he opened Anthropic's Claude chatbot app on his phone and took a photo. The algorithms analyzed the image and provided more context for what each button could do.
When I tested OpenAI's imaging features for ChatGPT last year I found it just as useful, at least for low-stakes tasks. I recommend using AI image analysis to identify those random cords in your home, but not to guess the identity of a loose prescription pill.
Anthropically released the iOS app that helped make Lewenstein available for everyone to download earlier this month. I decided to try out the Claude app, in line with a goal I set this year to experiment with a wider variety of chatbots. And I chatted with Lewenstein via video to see what advice he had for getting started with Claude and how to ask questions in a way that elicited the most helpful answers.
Get chatty
Decades of Google Search dominating the Internet have trained us to type blunt and concise queries when we want something. To get the most out of chatbots like Claude, you need to break away from that approach. “It's not Google Search,” says Lewenstein. “So you don't type in three keywords, you actually have a conversation with them.” He encourages users to avoid an overly utilitarian communication style and become a bit more verbose Clues. Instead of writing a short sentence, try writing prompts that are a few sentences long or even a few paragraphs long.
Share photos
AI image analysis is still quite new Anthropic's chatbot– it was released in March – but it can be a powerful way to quickly ask questions to the chatbot. Lewenstein recommends using images as a starting point for conversations with Claude, as he did under his house. While the function may not always be accurate, it's helpful (and fun) if you keep the limitations in mind and look for opportunities where an image can answer your question.
Be direct
Still not getting the results you want? A solid troubleshooting technique is to be overly prescriptive in your directions. “Just talking to Claude as a person kind of leads you astray,” Lewenstein says. Instead, try to give Claude an almost uncomfortable amount of context about how you want the answer formatted, for example by saying it should be in bullet points or short paragraphs, and give clear directions about the tone it should use. Do you want lyrical answers or something that sounds more technical? Also consider telling Claude who the intended audience is and what their level of knowledge on the topic may be.
Try it, try again
If your first question to Claude doesn't yield a good result, keep in mind that your first question is just the starting point. Follow-up prompts and clarifying questions are critical to steering a chatbot in the right direction.
When interacting with a chatbot, I quickly start a new conversation thread if the output goes wrong so I can try a different opening prompt. This is not the best approach, says Lewenstein.
He suggests staying in the same chat window and providing direct feedback to the bot about what you want to do differently, from tone to structure. “I literally type: 'No, too complicated.' I don't understand what these words mean. Can you try again, but simplify one level further,” says Lewenstein, recalling a time when Claude's summary of a document was confusing.
Upload large documents
Speaking of documents, Claude's ability to analyze uploaded data is one of his strengths. The applications for this are more clearly for use in the workplace, where the chatbot can help with Excel spreadsheets and overflowing email inboxes, but it can also be a useful feature outside the office. If you upload a lot of text, Claude can spot trends you might not have noticed otherwise. Ask the chatbot to look for patterns in the language used or the topics covered. Do you have a PDF you need to read, but it's so long it's making your eyes glaze over? Claude can help you focus on the most important aspect of the document first.
I uploaded the transcript of my conversation with Lewenstein to Claude and asked which quotes would be highlighted as important. The chatbot did an impeccable job of capturing the main themes of the conversation, and it highlighted many of the quotes that I ultimately decided to use for this newsletter. (Anthropic's policy means that, unless you log init is unlikely that your input data will be used to train the AI models.)
Text like you're friends
Yes, you should play around with writing longer and more specific prompts to Claude, but it's also smart to approach chatbot conversations as a back-and-forth volley of messages. “I actually think the mobile app is a very natural form factor because you're chatting with people on your phone all the time,” says Lewenstein.
When I uploaded a photo of a robot mural I saw in a cool bar in San Francisco for the Claude app, the chatbot provided a poetic description of the art. There was no guessing which city the bar was in, a near-impossible task, but the cadence of the conversation felt like messaging an enthusiastic friend. Claude thanked me when I finally revealed the bar's location: “My assumptions were pleasantly reversed.”
I need to use it more to really get the hang of Claude, but I already feel like the chatbot results have a friendly feel to them. While ChatGPT is still my favorite chatbot, I can see myself adding Claude to the mix if I want to send messages with an AI tool that prioritizes engaging, human-sounding results over a more dry, efficient communication style. It's important to remain open to using AI tools you haven't tried before. Chatbots continue to improve and change rapidly, so it's way too early to be locked into a single tool.