A prompt is an input or instruction that the user gives to an AI assistant (or an AI model) to generate a specific response or outcome. A poor prompt often leads the AI model to produce undesirable or inaccurate results. Based on this, prompt engineering deals with creating good and effective prompts to achieve the desired results from AI models.

In text generation, a prompt can be a sentence, a question, or a topic that the model responds to in order to generate relevant text. For example: "Tell me a short story about a brave knight who defeats a dragon."

In image generation, a prompt is used to instruct the AI model to create an image based on a description or concept. For instance, a prompt like "a sunset over the sea" might prompt the model to generate a corresponding image. Prompts are therefore crucial in both areas for controlling the desired outcomes from AI models. For example: "A futuristic cityscape at night with glowing neon lights and flying cars. Realistic and detailed."