A leaflet of advice, an instruction sheet for an inhaler, the text for a poster. AI writes it in twenty seconds and writes it well: clear, ordered, no typos. That is the problem — the easy half comes out so well that people stop looking at the hard one.
Being understood is the easy half. The hard half is what you may claim.
And the model will not stop you there: it writes the way the internet writes, and the
internet attributes properties very cheerfully.
What the model will write without being asked
| What comes out on its own | Why it cannot leave your pharmacy |
|---|---|
| "Boosts your defences", "helps flush out toxins" | These are properties attributed to something that is not a medicine. With no authorised claim behind them, they do not stand up. |
| "Prevents colds", "cures…" | Prevent and cure are medicine verbs. Written about anything else, they advertise an indication it does not have. |
| Comparing it to a medicine | "Just as effective as ibuprofen but natural" is not a comparison: it is an indication in disguise. |
| Testimonials and anecdotes | "It has worked for a lot of our customers" is not evidence, and on material signed by a pharmacy it reads as though it were. |
| A specific dose you never gave it | If it was not in the product information you pasted, it came from memory. |
And you are the one signing it. The material goes out with your
pharmacy's name on it, not the model's. Delegating the writing does not delegate the
responsibility — that is
lesson 6 of Level 1, and on printed
material it weighs more, because it stays and it gets handed out.
The instruction that does stop it
Write a patient sheet on how to use this inhaler.
The product information is below; use nothing that is not in it.
Rules:
- Do not attribute any property that is not in the text I gave you.
- Do not use "prevents", "cures", "boosts", or comparisons with other
products.
- Sentences under 15 words. No subordinate clauses. No abbreviations.
- Eight steps at most, numbered, one action each.
- End with one line on when to seek advice.
If something I asked for is not in the product information, tell me
and leave it blank instead of filling it in.Being understood: four things you can measure
"Make it simple" is not an instruction, it is a wish. These four can actually be checked by reading the result:
- Short sentences. Under fifteen words, one idea each.
- No subordinate clauses. "Take it with food. If it upsets your stomach, let us know" instead of "given that it may cause gastric discomfort, it is recommended that…".
- The name of the thing, not the mechanism. "It may give you a cough" is understood; "it may cause a dry cough through bradykinin accumulation" adds nothing for somebody deciding whether to ring their doctor.
- What to do, not what it is. A patient sheet always ends in an action and in a "when to seek advice".
Read it out loud. It is the fastest check there is for patient
material: if you have to take a breath halfway through a sentence, or read one twice,
it is badly written — and the model cannot detect that, because as far as it is
concerned the sentence is perfectly built.
A full example, and what is wrong with it
With the prompt above — the one with the five rules inside — and the product information pasted underneath, this is what comes out. Read it first the way you would on a Tuesday morning: it is fine. It is clear, it is ordered, the steps are numbered and it fits on one side.
Then look at the four points below, which is what that Tuesday reading misses.
What it replies
How to use your inhaler
1. Remove the cap and shake the inhaler. · 2. Breathe out slowly. · 3. Put the mouthpiece between your lips and seal them. · 4. Start breathing in and press at the same time. · 5. Keep breathing in slowly and deeply. · 6. Hold your breath for about ten seconds. · 7. Wait a minute if you need another dose. · 8. Put the cap back on.
Dosing: one inhalation every 8 hours.
This inhaler will help you breathe better from day one and will prevent attacks.
Ask your pharmacist or your doctor if you have any questions about your treatment, if you find you need it more often than usual, or if your symptoms do not improve with the recommended use.
And now, what is wrong with that reply:
- "Every 8 hours" turns a reliever into a fixed schedule. If the product information says "as required", that line changes the treatment: somebody who only needed it on exertion starts using it three times a day and — worse — stops noticing that they need it more than before, which is the warning sign that control is deteriorating. The model put it there because an instruction sheet "usually" carries a dosing line. It did not invent an odd dose: it invented the structure these papers usually have.
- "Will help you breathe better from day one" is a promise. And a double promise at that: a timeframe ("from day one") and an outcome ("prevent attacks"). Neither was in the product information you pasted, and both are medicine verbs applied without the caveats the information itself carries. The prompt explicitly forbade it — which teaches the uncomfortable lesson: writing the rule does not guarantee it is followed, and that is why the check comes after reading, not before writing.
- And the step that was in the information is missing. If the inhaler contains a corticosteroid, the information says to rinse your mouth afterwards — and it is not in the eight steps. This is the hard half of reviewing: what is surplus you see by reading, what is missing you do not. Which is why checking patient material is not "is what it says correct?" but "is everything the information said in there?", and it is done with both papers side by side, not from memory.
- The last sentence has 32 words. You asked for under 15. And it is the sentence that matters most, because it is the when to seek help one. Notice the pattern: the eight instructions follow the rule — they are easy to split — and the final warning does not, because it chains three conditions. That is where it always breaks, and where it breaks worst: somebody who reads with difficulty abandons that sentence halfway, which is the same as not writing it. Three six-word sentences fix it.
What to take away is not that the model writes badly: it writes very well, the eight steps are perfect and it has saved you twenty minutes. It is that the three things that fail are the three you cannot see by reading — a dosing line that sounds normal, a promise that sounds kind, and a step that is not there.
Hence this lesson's check, which takes two minutes: read the result with the product information beside you, ticking off each claim, and read the final sentence out loud. Everything else on the sheet can be reviewed at a glance; those two things cannot.
And if your pharmacy is not like that
If the material is for one specific person. Then it gets more useful and needs more care: you can adjust the reading level, the language and even the type size, and that is worth far more than a generic leaflet. What does not change is lesson one's rule — the sheet gets personalised, the prompt does not: "for an older person living alone with poor eyesight" is useful context; the name, the exact age and the diagnosis are not needed to write it and should not leave the pharmacy.
If it is a poster for the window or the counter. The risk moves: there are almost no omissions here — there are no instructions to complete — and all the danger is in the claims, because a poster is short text and short text promises more. The same review applies, in fast mode: no sentence with "prevents", "cures" or "boosts", no comparison with a medicine, and no cited studies. Thirty seconds, and it is the only thing to look at.
If it goes to a carer rather than the patient. The reader changes and so does the content, not just the tone: a carer needs what to watch for and when to call, which is exactly what gets trimmed when you simplify. Say so in the prompt ("for the daughter who administers the medication, not for the patient") and you will see the sheet reorganise completely. And here the final sentence matters twice as much, because that is the person who will decide whether to call the doctor on a Sunday.
If many people in your area do not read Spanish easily. Translating is one of the things a model does best and here it solves a real problem that had no cheap solution before. Two cautions: ask for plain language in the target language too — otherwise it translates the formal register — and bear in mind you will not be able to review the result the way you review Spanish. Which is why this use is best reserved for material whose original you have already checked in full: you translate something good, you do not write straight into the other language.
If the material is for a care home or day centre. It will be read by non-clinical staff, and that changes what has to be written: not less detail, different detail — what gets done, in what order, and who gets told if something happens. Say so in the prompt ("for care assistants who administer, not for the patient or for nursing") and ask for every step to end in an observable action. And here the "when to call" line is not a footnote: it is the only thing that decides what happens on a Saturday night.
When it does not work first time
I give it the rules and it still slips in "boosts your defences".
It happens, and the more commercial the request the more it happens. Two things work better than repeating the rule: ask it at the end to list every property it claimed and where it got it from — that list usually comes back honest and gives the invented ones away — and avoid the pushy words in your own request ("make it sell", "attractive", "punchy"), because they lead straight to that register. Half the problem is in the adjective you used.
The text is correct but it reads like a drug-company leaflet.
Because it is the average of the leaflets it read. An example fixes it, adjectives do not: paste in one of your own materials that works and ask it to write the new one in that tone and structure. One good example beats five lines of instructions, and it also pins down things you could not describe — how you address people, how formal you are, what you take as read. It is the use where having something of your own saved pays off most.
I take out the surplus and I am left with a dull sheet.
That usually means the surplus was the only part promising anything, and then the question is not about writing: it is what that material actually offers. The fix that works is changing the subject — instead of what the product does, what you do: "we will show you how to use it", "we will check whether it is working for you", "we will tell you when to come back". None of that needs an authorised claim and it is the one thing the pharmacy next door cannot copy.
What if the manufacturer gives me the material ready-made?
Then the job is the same and rather more awkward, because it arrives well printed and that disarms you. You are the one handing it out, with your name on the front: if it claims something that does not hold up, the conversation with the patient is yours, not theirs. The review is identical — claims, comparisons, promises — and the advantage is that here you can actually ask where each one comes from. If nobody can tell you, that is your answer.
I do not have the product information to hand to paste in.
Then do not write the material yet, because without it you cannot make the one check that matters — and the result will look just as good, which is the problem. The information sheet is in the regulator's database and downloads as a PDF in twenty seconds: less time than reviewing the text without it will take you. And if it is a product with no such sheet because it is not a medicine, that is precisely the signal to be more careful about what gets claimed, not less.
Before you print it
- Every property it claims is in the product information I gave it.
- No "prevents", no "cures", no comparison with a medicine.
- I have read the whole thing out loud.
- It ends by saying when to seek advice.
- I am signing it, and I reviewed it as if I had written it.
The private area has a patient report generator with the warnings already built in, and the website lesson comes with a checker for unauthorised claims, for when the text is going to be published.
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