How to use AI to write without sounding like AI

People recognise AI text in seconds now. The smooth, eager, slightly empty tone has become a genre of its own — and readers trust it less. The good news: you can use AI without ending up there.

Why AI text gives itself away

A language model writes the average of everything it has read. That produces text that is grammatically perfect and entirely predictable. It never gets straight to the point, rarely says anything contentious, and uses the same transitions over and over.

The most common warning signs:

• Introductions that spend three sentences saying the topic is "more important than ever"
• Phrases like "in today's digital landscape" and "it's worth noting that"
• Lists where every point is the same length and equally generic
• A conclusion that summarises without concluding
• No concrete numbers, no first-hand examples, no opinions

None of these is wrong on its own. Together they shout "a machine wrote this".

The brief is everything

The biggest difference isn't in the editing afterwards — it's in what you give the AI to work with. An empty prompt produces an empty answer. A good brief gives you something to build on.

A usable brief contains:

• The actual question the text should answer
• Who will read it, and what they already know
• Your own numbers, prices, cases or experience to include
• A position — what do you think about this?
• The points you don't want included

The more you put in, the less average comes out. Spend five minutes on the brief and you save twenty on the edit.

Give it your voice

AI has no voice until you give it one. The simplest way: paste in two or three pieces you've written yourself and ask for the same tone. The model picks up the rhythm, the word choices and how formal you are.

Better still is a short tone-of-voice document. A few lines on how you talk: do you use "you" formally or casually, short or long sentences, humour or none, which words you never use. You can reuse that document on everything.

Without it, everything sounds like "a helpful assistant". With it, it sounds like your business.

Edit it as if the intern wrote it

Think of the AI draft as a first draft from a fast intern: well-spoken, but without experience and occasionally completely wrong. You'd never publish it unread.

The edit does four jobs:

1. Cut the filler. Strike the empty phrases and the introductions that say nothing. A 1,200-word draft often has 800 worth keeping.
2. Check the facts. Every number and every claim. AI invents things that sound right — in the same confident tone.
3. Add the real stuff. A first-hand example, a concrete number, an opinion. This is what the machine couldn't know.
4. Break the rhythm. Vary the sentence length. Start a paragraph on the point. Let it sound a little more human.

Small moves that remove the "AI smell"

A few habits that work straight away:

• Delete the first three sentences. AI always warms up too long. The point often arrives in paragraph two.
• Swap generic examples for your own. "A business might..." becomes "A client in construction...".
• Pick one position. AI loves "on the one hand, on the other hand". Decide.
• Read it aloud. What sounds robotic to the ear often looks fine on screen.

How much should AI do?

There's no fixed answer, but a useful line: let AI help with structure, drafts and rephrasing — never with facts, opinions or experience. It's a good writing partner and a poor expert.

Used this way, AI is a tool that makes you faster, not a replacement that makes you generic. To see how we combine AI and editing in practice, read AI content that ranks — or book a short call about what it could look like for you.