just made it bland, and simplified

Not always, but for the most part, you need to tell it more about what you're looking for. Your prompts need to be deep and clear.

"change it to a relaxed tone, but make it make me feel emotionally invested, 10th grade reading level, add descriptive words that fit the text, throw an allegory, and some metaphors" The more you tell it, the more it'll do. It's not creative. It's just making it fit whatever you ask it to do. If you don't give enough direction, you'll just get whatever the random noise rolls, which isn't always what you're looking for. It's not uncommon to need to write a whole paragraph about what you want from it. When I'm asking it for something creative, sometimes it takes half a dozen change requests. Once in a while, I'll be so far off base, I'll clear the conversation and just try again. The way the random works, it will likely give you something completely different on the next try.

My favorite thing to do is give it a proper outline of what I need it to write, set the voice, tone, objective, and complexity. Whatever it gives back, I spend a good solid paragraph critiquing it. when it's > 80% how I like it, I take the text and do copy edits on it until I'm satisfied.

It's def not a magic bullet for free work. But it can let me produce something that looks like I spent an hour on it when I spent 20 minutes, and that's not nothing.