In today’s fast-paced digital age, it’s important to recognize that artificial intelligence has revolutionized the way we create content. While AI offers numerous benefits, it’s equally essential to ensure that the content produced remains authentic and resonates with…
Wait there! Wait right there!
If you sniffed out AI’s trademark tone in the first paragraph, you deserve a gold star. If you didn’t, you need to read through this entire piece.
AI has become central to marketing, and most brands, including their writing teams, have jumped on the bandwagon. Good for productivity? Definitely.
But there’s a catch. AI-generated content is like branded content itself: When it tries too hard to sound human, it’s obvious. AI detection tools aren’t bulletproof, either, as they may flag content inaccurately in either direction, insisting a fully human-written article is AI or vice versa. (Studies have found these tools are nearly useless.)
While AI-generated content may not hurt your SEO or GEO rankings, there’s clear evidence that human audiences find it off-putting. According to research by Data Access Management (DAM) company Bynder, 50% of readers can detect when copy is AI-generated, and 52% find such content less engaging. Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Media Consumer study also found that nearly two-thirds (62%) of users say they’re less likely to trust or engage with social posts if they know AI was involved in their creation.
So if you want to reach real humans with your content, your copy should sound like it came from one.
Here are a few ways to edit your AI content so it sounds less like a corporate-jargon robot and more like an actual person with a point of view.
Common Signs Your Content Sounds Too Much Like AI
AI-generated content is sometimes so obvious you only need a glance to identify it, like when a single article contains 55 em-dashes.
Other times, you might need to read through the lines to identify telltale signs like:
Generic or empty introductions
Nicolas Breedlove, CEO at PlaygroundEquipment.com, shares that one of the easiest giveaways is a lack of real perspective or context. “Earlier versions of AI models, like ChatGPT 3.5, often provide content intros that sound overly rigid and repetitive. Their outputs also lack substance and do not possess the right hook to onboard your readers.”
Compare this generic intro for a travel guide:
To this human-written version:
Your flight is delayed, your bag is overweight, and the hotel just sent an email saying check-in isn’t until 4 pm. Anyone who has ever stepped foot in an airport, bleary-eyed and running on bad coffee and optimism, knows that travel is full of these little headaches. But it doesn’t have to be. This blog will show you how to pack like a pro, skip tourist traps, and save money while still enjoying every stop of your journey.
The second is much more personalized and relatable.
Hedging language
Hedging language includes terms or phrases that weaken the assertiveness of a statement and make it less absolute. While this is great for academic writing, where researchers want to avoid overstating conclusions or implying absolute certainty, using it in your marketing copy can undermine your authority and make your brand sound unsure of itself.
Examples include:
- It is important to note…
- It can be argued…
- Perhaps…
- Maybe…
You might also come across vague phrases like “a number of…” instead of a definite figure.
Claims without evidence
Recent data suggests that even the latest version of ChatGPT (5.0) hallucinates about 1 in 10 times in its outputs. Even domain-specific AI can’t be fully trusted: In one Stanford benchmark, legal models got things wrong in up to one-third of their responses.
In marketing writing, hallucinations might include fabricated quotes (yikes), bogus statistics (oof), or made-up studies (just ask Deloitte why this is problematic.)
So, once you see sentences starting with:
- “Some research shows that…”
- “Studies suggest that…”
- “Experts agree that…”
- “It is widely known that…”
Stop and check whether there’s a real source or data point behind any claims AI churns out. Getting caught in an error is embarrassing, and it can quickly erode audience trust.
Monotonous sentence structures
“You might see tons of formulaic transitions or connectors in a single or consecutive paragraphs, which ends up making the whole block feel flat. This occurs [especially often] when using older LLM versions,” says Jeffrey Zhou, CEO and Founder of Fig Loans.
See this:
AI also loves lists of three (innovate, iterate, and inspire! Create, connect, and convert!). These are fine in moderation, but if you start seeing them in every section or paragraph, use your editorial judgment to gauge if they can be streamlined or phrased differently.
When every sentence length looks just the same or with as slight a variation as possible, raise your whiskers too.
Excessive use of contrastive parallelism
AI content often uses statements like, “While X is true, Y is also important,” or, “It’s not just about sales; it’s about…”
You’ll sometimes see this back-to-back in a piece and it automatically creates a rhythm that feels forced.
Other examples:
- Social media is more than a broadcast tool; it’s a place to build relationships.
- It’s not about working harder; it’s about working smarter.
- It’s less storytelling and more story-selling.
- The question isn’t what can AI do for us — it’s what should we do with AI.
Specific “tells”/phrases AI loves
You can spot AI’s favorite phrases from a mile away — the linguistic equivalent of clip art. Here are a few dead giveaways you’ve probably seen a hundred times:
- Delve
- Fast-paced world
- More than ever
- Rapidly changing landscape
- Picture/imagine this
- The implications are clear
- The takeaway? or, The result?
Spot similar patterns in this blog’s intro:
AI also has an affinity for colons in headlines and subheadlines, so edit excessive instances out to be few and far between. Random bolded text and oddly capitalized phrases are other formatting quirks that make a piece feel more like a machine trying to emphasize importance than a human making a stylistic choice.
Must-Haves on Every Editor’s Anti-AI Checklist
Editing AI-isms out of your content isn’t as simple as recognizing catchphrases and pulling out parallelisms. Here are six things you must look out for before you hit publish.
1. Replace weak verbs and cut filler
AI often uses padded language and limp verbs — phrases like “helps with,” “is aimed at,” “can be used to,” and “serves as.” Beyond being an AI tell, these flabby constructions are simply lazy writing. Savvy editors have been striking these empty phrases from drafts for decades.
Replace these with stronger alternatives and cut out excesses. For instance:
- Helps with → powers
- Is aimed at → delivers
- Works to → improves / strengthens / supports (depending on context)
- Is focused on → prioritizes / advances
- Plays a role in → shapes / influences
It’s also a good idea to cut filler like “in order to,” “as well as,” or “in terms of” that bloats sentences without adding meaning.
2. Add names, numbers, examples
AI-generated text loves to speak in broad claims and sweeping generalities. The fastest way to humanize these eye-glazing paragraphs is to get concrete. Seek out generalisms and personalize them by adding names, proper pronouns, or specific examples where applicable.
Add statistical numerical evidence, case studies, reports, infographics — anything that confirms your claims.
3. Fact-check, fact-check, fact-check
If you’re using tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT, they can be incredibly useful for surfacing quick references. Sometimes, those links will point you in the right direction — but not always. Generative systems are trained to sound confident, not to be correct.
That’s why every fact deserves a manual check. Click through every source to make sure it leads to a real, credible page, ideally from a primary source or recognized publication. Verify numbers by cross-referencing them with the original study or dataset, not just the AI summary. And if you see suspiciously perfect phrasing (like a too-good-to-be-true stat or a quote that sounds like marketing copy), trace it back to its origin.
4. Increase use of expert quotes or original input
Weave expert quotes or insights into your content to make it feel less automated, especially when addressing sensitive topics or offering practical tips that require more than generic advice.
To find sources, you can utilize platforms like HARO (which relaunched earlier in 2025), and social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, as well as professional communities. You can also reference publicly available quotes from credible individuals on reputable third-party publications in your piece, so long as you cite the original source with a link or by name.
5. Insert local or unique details
AI content can feel like it’s addressing everyone and everything. Make it sound more unique by referencing local angles or examples, like those in your industry, geographical location, or relevant events in your niche.
Bring in examples that your audience can easily relate to. For instance, if you’re writing about the state of the SaaS ecosystem, reference a real milestone (e.g., Figma’s acquisition by Adobe) instead of a vague “major tech deal.”
These small touches make your piece feel like it was written by someone who actually has expertise and knows the audience, versus scraped or regurgitated advice from the internet.
6. Adjust transitions to sound natural
Excessive transitions give your piece a pre-scripted, bland tone. Ensure they’re only used when necessary and cut out others. Try to limit formulaic transitions (like “moreover,” “therefore,” or “in addition”) to no more than two every three paragraphs.
You can introduce a mix of pauses, conjunctions, and short sentences to make your transitions sound natural and smooth.
Improving Drafts at the Source
Before using AI to populate your content or refine your paragraphs, you need to condition it to give you drafts that are as human as possible. Here are some tips to make your job easier later on in the process.
Prompt for specific sources, not general summaries
“AI-assisted drafts are only as human-like as the prompts you provide. If you ask ChatGPT to write an overview of ‘Generative Engine Optimization,’ it will likely stitch together generic summaries from its training data,” says Anna Zhang, Head of Marketing at U7BUY. “Instead, prompt it to look at a specific source, reference an example, or cite a particular fact.”
The same principle applies to statistics and case studies used to support claims. Instruct your model to retrieve data only from direct sources, rather than general statistical summaries.
Supply voice samples for tone
Once your prompts are grounded in real sources, the next step is to make sure the voice feels equally grounded in your brand.
“Help AI understand your brand tone both in text and by voice by recording comprehensive samples. You can simply lift your previous podcasts, blog samples, and vlogs (if available) and paste them as training data, provided it doesn’t breach data privacy laws,” advises Leigh McKenzie, community advocate at Traffic Think Tank.
Other representative branded details, such as case studies, positive public reviews, and event highlights, will also help AI create content that adopts your tone, whether playful, like Duolingo, or formal, like Forbes.
Add style rules: concise verbs, active voice, varied rhythm
Create a style guide that details words to avoid, which verbs to use as alternatives, preferred voice patterns, ideal rhythms, and recommended sentence lengths. Then feed it to your AI model and run tests to see how closely it matches your brand style.
The more detailed your style guide is, the better your drafts will align with your brand’s voice from the start. You should also share the guide with your content team so they can better prompt AI models and ensure consistency in their own writing.
Use negative rules: no clichés, no hedging, no generic intros
AI tools like ChatGPT allow you to set guardrails around its output. Head to the personalization box and set negative rules protecting against clichés, hedging phrases, generic introductions, and repetitive phrases.
These settings are not absolute, and the AI model might still bypass them. You may need to paste the rules into the chatbox each time before generating new drafts, but the “personalization” feature acts as reinforcement.
Build a Workflow That Supports Human-First Editing
Good content is a result of a well-functioning content workflow. You can build one by defining clear editorial processes across the outlining, drafting, reviewing, and publishing stages, including specifying who handles editing and compliance.
Your outlining and reviewing stages should emphasize human-first editing, with a particular focus on implementing your checklists and style guides.
You can also adopt AI content platforms offering dedicated human editors, such as Contently, to ensure your drafts are accurate, on-brand, and polished before publication.
AI isn’t going anywhere — but neither is your reader’s instinct for authenticity. Keep that your north star.
Content that clicks with algorithms and audiences. See how Contently can help.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
What’s the best way to make AI-generated content sound human?
Edit for specificity. Add real examples, quotes, and numbers. Vary sentence rhythm, swap out filler verbs, and trim hedging phrases. Be on the lookout for common AI tells and phrases, like “delve” and excessive use of contrastive parallelism or em-dashes.
Should I disclose when AI was used to create content?
Transparency builds trust. If AI helped with research or outlining, it’s fine to say so, especially if a human editor verified and refined the final draft.
How can Contently help with AI-edited content?
Contently pairs AI-assisted tools with a global network of professional editors who ensure every piece sounds human, aligns with your brand, and meets editorial standards before it’s published.
