Nashville, TN & Williamsburg, VA – 24 Nov 2025 – A new study published in Artif. Intell. Auton. Syst. delivers the first systematic cross-model analysis of prompt engineering for structured data generation, offering actionable guidance for developers, data scientists, and organizations leveraging large language models (LLMs) in healthcare, e-commerce, and beyond. Led by Ashraf Elnashar from Vanderbilt University, alongside co-authors Jules White (Vanderbilt University) and Douglas C. Schmidt (William & Mary), the research benchmarks six prompt styles across three leading LLMs to solve a critical challenge: balancing accuracy, speed, and cost in structured data workflows.

Structured data—from medical records and receipts to business analytics—powers essential AI-driven tasks, but its quality and efficiency depend heavily on how prompts are designed. “Prior research only scratched the surface, testing a limited set of prompts on single models,” said Elnashar, the study’s corresponding author and a researcher in Vanderbilt’s Department of Computer Science. “Our work expands the horizon by evaluating six widely used prompt formats across ChatGPT-4o, Claude, and Gemini, revealing clear trade-offs that let practitioners tailor their approach to real-world needs.”