Top 10 AI chatbot do's and don’ts to help you get the most out of ChatGPT, Gemini, and more

While chatbots can be great for some tasks, they can also put your security and privacy at risk in others. If you're new to AI then here's some advice on the do's and don’ts of using chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and the others.

For example, using chatbots as a brainstorming tool is a great idea, and so is using them for creating content, but using them to cheat on your homework or accepting whatever they say without question is not a good idea. Chatbots can often make things up, and it's better to double check every fact they present.

Here are the top 10 do's and don't when using a chatbot.

1. DO: Ask AI to help you brainstorm a decision

If you reached a crossroads in your life and you need to make a decision, whether that’s about buying a new car or moving house, then describe the situation and get ChatGPT to come up with a handy list of pros and cons.

While you don't need to get AI to make big decisions for you, it can be very good at laying out the different sides to a decision that you need to make, and that will help you see the big picture.

2. DON'T: Use AI to cheat on your homework

Children using ChatGPT to come up with answers to homework questions is not a good idea. Firstly, it’s cheating, and secondly, it can be very obvious to the teachers exactly who is using ChatGPT, and getting caught can have serious consequences.

The same goes for students in college or university, although the consequences for getting caught could be even higher, perhaps leading to being failed on coursework.

Using ChatGPT in Study Mode as a tutor to help you learn however is a great idea.

3. DO: Use it for proofreading

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are excellent at proofreading your written work. Either cut and paste your written work, or export your document from something like Google Drive as a Word document and upload it into ChatGPT, then ask, “Can you proofread this, please?”

If the text is short, then the AI will simply present you with a more polished version of the document. If it is long then it will discuss stylistic points as well as the structure of the document. In both cases it can provide you with a Word document that has tracked changes in, or just make the changes it suggests.

4. DON'T: Believe everything AI says without checking

Large Language Models like ChatGPT want to be helpful. In fact, they often want to be too helpful, and that leads them to simply make things up. It happens so often that it’s got its own name – AI hallucinations. AI chatbots can hallucinate facts out of nowhere. They can hallucinate scientific studies, or law cases, or simply get math problems wrong.

Hallucination rates on OpenAI's most up to date model, ChatGPT-5 are around 1.4% (according to Vectara), which is low, but it still means that you need to double-check anything it’s telling you is true, just to make sure.

5. DO: Use AI to learn new things

Having access to an AI like Gemini or ChatGPT is like having a personal tutor on your mobile phone or laptop that can teach you just about anything you’d like to learn. The world is your oyster, so pick a subject and start to learn.

If you like, you can get ChatGPT to create a program designed to teach you something over a long period of time – just ask it. It’s not so good at teaching physical skills, although it will point you to relevant YouTube videos that demonstrate how to do something, especially if you ask it to.

6. DON'T Let kids use AI on their own

According to OpenAI: “ChatGPT is not meant for children under 13, and we require that children ages 13 to 18 obtain parental consent before using ChatGPT”.

If you’re using an AI chatbot with a child under 13 then you, the adult, should be the person interacting with it, and we’d still recommend keeping an eye on children over 13 who are using it.

So, if you want to use ChatGPT to create a bedtime story for your kids, or let them play a game with it, then that’s fine, so long as you are the person interacting with the chatbot.

7. DO: Use AI to generate code

One of the strengths of AI is that it can write code - or you can upload your existing code and ask it to help finish it. This works particularly well in Agent mode in ChatGPT, where you can ask it to code an app in the background, because it can take a while.

This is useful when you need something very specific that isn’t available elsewhere, or you just fancy getting it to create a Space Invaders-style game. Chatbots can also write code for more professional situations, but it’s worth getting an expert to check the accuracy since it can make mistakes.

8. DON'T: Give AI your credit card number

Beyond entering your payment details when you sign up for a Plus or Pro account, we would never recommend that you enter your credit card details into an actual chatbot chat.

It is highly unlikely that an AI chatbot will ever ask you for your credit card details inside a chat, but as a matter of course, you should never offer them. As AI evolves so too will security threats that take advantage of it, and our acceptance of it, and it’s quite possible that some sort of malicious code could hack into an AI chatbot or even imitate it.

9. DO: Use AI to play fun games

Chatbots are great for playing games. Simply ask them to play a game of tik-tak-toe to get started. In fact, it can play most simple board games like chess, checkers, connect four, battleship and trivia games, which are particularly fun.

You can even get AI to create a roleplaying text adventure game in the style of those old choose-your-own-adventure books. Using the GPTs menu (in the left hand menu bar) you can search for a GPT for a particular game you want to play, like Dungeons and Dragons, for example.

10. DON'T: Rely on it for medical advice

If you want to research a particular condition, or get it to explain what doctors are telling you in a simple way that you can understand, then AI can be very useful. However, it should go without saying that AI is not a qualified doctor.

AI does a great job of explaining medical terms, however, that doesn’t mean it is qualified to diagnose you given a list of your symptoms. Again, the general advice to treat ChatGPT and the other chatbots as a great way to brainstorm ideas and talk about subjects holds true, but remember that you should always seek the opinion of a medical professional for medical matters.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.

The best video cameras

➡️ Read our full best video cameras guide
1. Best overall
Panasonic Lumix S1 II
2. Best budget
Fujifilm X-M5
3. Best vlogging
DJI Pocket 3
4. Best filmmaking
Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K