What is a Prompt Loop?
A Prompt Loop is when "just one more prompt" takes over. More options, more refinements, an hour gone, and without noticing, AI has started replacing your thinking rather than supporting it.
Scroll Loops cost time.
Prompt Loops cost thinking.
The question at the heart of it: is AI supporting your thinking, or replacing it?
I love working with AI. I use it for research, for organising my notes, for getting started when a blank page feels too big. It has made things possible for me that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
But I've also noticed the pull. The same pull I've spent years studying in social media, now in a new form. So I gave it a name, just as I did with the Scroll Loop.
My very meta moment
I sat down to write something useful about AI-written content, because everywhere I looked, emails, captions, web copy and videos were starting to sound the same.
So I used ChatGPT to help me write it.
And it started playing out in real time. Even with all my awareness and intention, even feeding it my voice notes, my scribbled notes, notes upon notes, what came back was sounding… Not. Like. Me.
The piece kept drifting off track. Then I realised that was exactly the thing I was writing about.
What a Prompt Loop feels like
In the mind
Excitement. Expectation. Just one more prompt. So close to perfect.
In the body
Still for hours. Leaning toward the screen. Breath gone shallow. Time you never felt pass.
You might also notice that you're asking AI the simplest questions you could have answered yourself, accepting what comes back without really questioning it, or that what you've written no longer sounds like you.
I've been there, many times. I still am, on the regular. I'm a fully grown adult who spends her working life studying this stuff, and I'm already noticing how often I use AI instead of my own brain.
There's a growing body of research on what happens when we hand our thinking over to AI. Is AI making us think less?
Why it matters
We're starting to sound the same. I see the patterns of AI writing everywhere now, and once you notice them, you can't un-notice them. A lot of people are using them. Me included. So where does the shame stem from?
It's what that does to us. Someone told me about an email she'd received from a colleague that was clearly AI-polished: perfect, in a way that didn't sound like them. And her first thought was: "If their email is this perfect, does my reply need to be too?"
Prompt · Loop · Notice · Choose
It's the same method as Scroll, Loop, Notice, Choose, for the pull of AI.
Prompt
AI is designed to keep the conversation going.
Loop
Just one more prompt. More options, more refinements, an hour gone.
Notice
Catching it in your mind and body, and asking the question: is AI supporting my thinking, or replacing it?
Choose
Deciding what happens next, rather than being carried on autopilot.
Just like with phones, there are different doorways into AI use. In my sessions, we play Prompt Loop Bingo to find the ones you recognise.
AI helps me, but it doesn't replace me
This is how I try to work with AI, and I'm open about it.
I use it to collect and organise research, to help me build things, like this website, which I would never have been able to do before, and to help give my ideas structure. But the ideas, the stories, the arguments and the final judgement are mine.
When I submitted written evidence to Parliament, I said so in the document itself: I used AI as a research organiser and drafting collaborator, following an ethical framework from the Consciously Digital Institute that distinguishes between AI as a substitute for thinking and AI as a support for it.
A few things that help me:
- Think first. Before you open the chat, spend a few minutes with the question yourself. Scribble. Talk it out.
- Edit the edit. Read what comes back carefully, and rewrite anything that assumes, isn't true or just doesn't sound like you.
- Add what only you have. Your real stories, your experiences, your way of saying things. AI can mimic a style, but it can't know your life.
- Be open about it. I think being open about how you're using it is useful, if we model ethical and thoughtful processes.
Questions to ask yourself
- Is AI supporting my thinking right now, or replacing it?
- Am I still fully in control of this?
- What part of this is truly mine: the idea, the structure, the words, or the feeling behind them?
- When does AI stop being a tool and start being the creator?
I used AI to help build this page too. This isn't about stopping. It's about choosing.
For schools and teams
Young people are using AI every day, often starting with help on their homework. So are the teams I work with. I teach Prompt · Loop · Notice · Choose alongside Scroll, Loop, Notice, Choose, in schools and workplaces, so people can use AI with their eyes open. Explore AI and attention
Questions people ask
What is a Prompt Loop?
A Prompt Loop is when "just one more prompt" takes over. More options, more refinements, an hour gone, and without noticing, AI has started replacing your thinking rather than supporting it.
What’s the difference between a Scroll Loop and a Prompt Loop?
A Scroll Loop is getting pulled into unintentional scrolling on your phone. A Prompt Loop is getting pulled into letting AI do your thinking. Scroll Loops cost time. Prompt Loops cost thinking. Both can be noticed and interrupted in the same way.
Is using AI bad for you?
Not in itself. AI can be a brilliant support for research, organising and creativity. The risk is relying on it so much that it replaces your own thinking, rather than supporting it.
How do I use AI without losing my voice?
Think before you prompt, write your own first draft where you can, and edit carefully anything AI gives you. Add your own stories and experiences, and be open about when you’ve used it.