You asked the AI for a quick email. It came back with “I hope this message finds you well,” three bullet points nobody asked for, and a closing line about “seamless collaboration.”
You read it and thought: no human talks like this.
Then, let’s be honest, you sent it anyway. You had a meeting in four minutes.
Here’s how to teach ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot to write like you.
Why your AI sounds like everyone else
ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot don’t know you. They’ve never seen how you write to a client or how short your emails get on a Friday afternoon. So they write like the average of everything they’ve read. And the average sounds like a brochure.
The fix isn’t a longer prompt. You don’t need 400 words of “act as a senior communications expert with 20 years of experience.” You need to show the AI how you actually write, tell it what you want at the end, and let it do the work.
That comes down to three steps.
Step 1: Collect your own writing
The AI needs real examples of you, not a description of you. Good sources:
- Sent emails. Your Sent folder is the best record you have of how you write at work. Copy 20 to 30 typical ones into a document: replies to clients, quick internal notes, a polite “no.”
- WhatsApp chats. Open a chat where you write a lot and choose Export chat, then Without media. On iPhone, tap the contact’s name at the top. On Android, tap the three dots, then More. You’ll get a text file (if it comes as a zip, unzip it first).
- Posts and documents you wrote yourself.
If you use Gmail, you can also connect it directly. In ChatGPT it’s under Settings > Plugins (some versions still say Apps). In Claude it’s Customize > Connectors > Gmail. Claude’s Gmail connector only reads and searches. It can’t send anything.
A quick privacy note before you paste. Your emails are full of other people’s information. Strip out client names, phone numbers, account details and anything confidential before you upload, or replace them with placeholders like [CLIENT]. If your office has an AI policy or an approved business account, use that.
Step 2: Ask the AI to build your writing profile
Upload your samples and give it the goal. Here’s a prompt you can copy:
I’ve attached examples of my own writing. Only analyze the parts I wrote, not other people’s replies. (In the WhatsApp file, my name is ____.)
My goal: a writing profile I can paste into your instructions, so that from now on, the emails and messages you draft for me sound like I wrote them.
Cover whatever matters for that. At least include how I open and close, my usual sentence length, how formal I am, words and phrases I use (and ones I never would), and how I write when I’m happy, when I’m annoyed, and when I’m saying no politely. Include short real examples from my texts.
If you need more samples or have questions, ask me before you write it.
Notice what’s missing: no “act as.” You set the goal, and the AI works out how to get there. Letting it ask questions beats trying to think of everything up front.
Read the profile. If something’s off (“I never use exclamation marks, what is this?”), tell it to fix it.
Step 3: Save it so you never paste it again
A profile you have to paste every time is a profile you’ll stop using by Wednesday. Save it once:
ChatGPT. In the sidebar, select New project and give it a name like “Writes like me.” Open the project, click the ••• menu at the top right, choose Project settings, and paste your profile into the instructions. Every chat inside that project follows them.
Claude. You have two good options:
- Projects. Go to Projects, click + New Project, then Set project instructions and paste the profile in.
- Styles. In any chat, click the Search and tools icon below the message box, choose Use style, then Create & edit styles > Create custom style. Choose Add Writing Example to upload your samples, and Claude builds the style for you. After that, you can pick your style in any chat.
Microsoft Copilot (work account). It depends a bit on your licence and what your IT team has switched on, but here are the options:
- Build an agent. In the Microsoft Copilot app, go to Agents > New Agent, describe what you want (“draft emails and messages in my writing style”), and paste your profile into its instructions under Configure. Then you open your agent whenever you need a draft.
- Copilot Notebooks. Open a notebook, click More options (…) > Instructions, and paste the profile. You can add your sample documents as reference files.
- Saved prompts. The low-tech option. Run a prompt that starts with your profile, hover over it and click Save prompt. It goes into the Copilot Prompt Gallery under Your prompts.
New to Copilot at work? Here’s how to automate a daily task with Microsoft 365 Copilot this week.
Then test it on a real email (client details removed) and tweak the profile until drafts need only a light edit.
Want your team to do this on their real work?
The point isn’t to let AI send emails for you. It’s to turn a ten-minute rewrite into a two-minute review.
This is exactly the kind of thing we do in Action AI team training sessions. We come to your office in Toronto and the GTA and work with your staff, hands-on, on their actual emails and documents in ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or Google Workspace. By the end of the session, each person has their own writing profile set up and tested on their real work.
If that sounds useful, have a look at actionai.ca and get in touch. Prefer to learn on your own first? Join our small-group online AI course.
Work smarter, not harder.
