AI & Digital Skills · AI at Work

Using AI for reports and research

AI is useful for structure, summaries and first drafts. It is weakest at facts and sources, so research still needs checking.

Learn

Step by step

  1. Use AI for structure. Ask for an outline, headings or a list of questions the report should answer.
  2. Give it your sources. Paste or attach the documents you trust and ask it to summarise only those.
  3. Ask for quotes with locations. Request the exact sentence and where it appears, then check it in the original.
  4. Write the conclusion yourself. Judgements and recommendations should come from you, not the tool.

Worked example

Before and after

Before: Write a report on remote working.

After: Using only the three attached staff-survey summaries, list the five most common concerns about remote working, with the number of mentions and one direct quote for each.

Why it works: Limiting the tool to your documents and asking for counts and quotes makes every claim checkable.

Try it

Practice tasks

  1. Why ask the AI to 'use only the attached documents'?
  2. An AI summary says '40% of respondents' but your survey had 50 people. How can you check?

Key terms and next lesson

RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)A method where an AI first looks up relevant documents, then uses them to write its answer.Context windowThe maximum amount of text a model can take into account at one time.HallucinationWhen an AI confidently produces information that is false or made up.Next: When not to rely on AIAI can be a helpful starting point, but some decisions need a qualified person, an official source, or your own judgement.

Last reviewed: 25 September 2026