Stop describing the document. Paste the document.

We went looking for something to report on December 17, 2022, and came up empty. It was a Saturday. ChatGPT had launched on November 30, so this was the tail end of its third week. No paper, launch or announcement that we could pin to this date stands out on the record.

So instead of inventing news, here's a habit that people were stumbling into right around then, and that still separates good results from mushy ones.

The mistake

Someone wants help replying to a long email from their landlord. They open the chat and type something like this:

My landlord sent me an email about the lease renewal. He's raising
the rent and wants an answer soon. Help me write a reply.

The model writes a reply. It's polite, generic and wrong in three places, because it has no idea what the landlord actually said. How much is the increase? Is "soon" Friday or next month? Did he mention the broken heater, or was that in a different email? You know all of this. The chatbot is guessing.

Why your summary hurts

When you describe a document, you've already filtered it. You keep what seemed important to you, in your words, and drop the rest. Sometimes the thing you dropped is exactly what matters: a date buried in paragraph four, a clause you skimmed, a slightly odd phrase that changes the tone.

The model can't recover what you didn't give it. It fills the gap with the most typical version of that kind of document, which is how you end up replying to an imaginary landlord.

I'd go further. I suspect a lot of "the AI made stuff up" moments are really "the AI was never shown the thing."

The fix

Paste the original. Then say what you want done with it.

Here's an email from my landlord, pasted in full below the line.
I want to reply. I'm fine with renewing, but I want to push back on
the increase and ask that the heater gets fixed before I sign.
Keep it short and friendly. Quote his exact deadline back to him so
there's no confusion.
---
[paste the whole email]