How to Make AI Not Sound Like AI.
We need to talk about GarbAIge.
There’s nothing worse than poorly AI-generated content. ☠️
I said it.
Maybe I’m overdramatizing things here. But, over the last few months, I’ve seen many articles so robotically written that I couldn’t finish their first paragraph. I’ve unfollowed people on LinkedIn because I felt like my feed was becoming a giant ChatGPT thread.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not because they were using AI. (They should).
It’s because they were doing it in a terrible way.
Using low-quality AI-generated content is quite a risky strategy, especially as people are getting better at spotting it.
That being said, if you use GenAI properly, you can achieve pretty incredible stuff, and obtain significant productivity gains. You’ll get things done faster while crafting better content.
AI is the personal assistant I've always dreamed of. It has helped me:
Improve the quality of my copywriting.
Confidently publish here and on my LinkedIn.
Accelerate my execution time by up to 50% on certain tasks.
Repurpose my content easily between different channels.
I’ve been using AI intensely over the last few months. Here are my top tips to make your AI outputs (finally) great.
#1. Using AI for the Right Use Cases, You Will.
AI performance highly varies between use cases. It excels at proofreading, delivers very good results for translation work, but usually underperforms in long copywriting with minimal input.
✅ Examples of good use cases:
Creation of first drafts.
Copywriting improvement suggestions.
Proofreading.
Translation (especially from a foreign language to English. Results are good, but usually not as great when translating from English to another language).
Repurposing content from one channel to another.
🤔 Not-so-great use cases:
Writing a complete blog article from scratch, especially with only a few inputs.
Generating automatic content for LinkedIn — if you’re
using an AI's automatic comment feature, I beg you to stop.
Cold outreach campaigns. I believe templates with dynamic fields yield better results than AI for these campaigns. I’ve been quite disappointed so far with most AI features from these tools. In my humble opinion, I don’t feel anyone would be fooled by an AI-generated outreach campaign. Again, that’s a personal opinion, let me know if you agree in our Slack Community.
By "not-so-great," I mean that AI is extremely good at writing AVERAGE content. If your strategy focuses on long-tail SEO, it'll probably be fine. But if you're looking to create valuable content for your customers or your colleagues, you should definitely invest more time in your content.
#2. Copywriting Style and Instructions, Use you Must.
Just like humans, AI can exhibit personality in writing.
And the default personality of most AI product are, well… not-so-great too.
The good news is, you only need to provide a few instructions to significantly improve the quality of your AI outputs. These instructions can be about the tone of voice, the maximum number of words, or the copywriting style, for example.
Here are a few examples of tone of voice you can specify in your prompts:
Simple: Clear and straightforward.
Playful: Fun and engaging.
Emotional: Taps into feelings.
Authoritative: Expert and confident.
Conversational: Casual and friendly.
Inspirational: Motivational and uplifting.
Persuasive: Convincing and compelling.
Professional: Formal and business-like.
Minimalist: Sparse and to-the-point.
Educational: Informative and instructional.
Everyone has a different copywriting style, so I recommend testing these instructions to find the ones that fit your (or your company's) style.
I personally prefer direct, simple language when speaking in English, so the one I use the most in my prompts is: “Use simple words and expressions.”
I also believe it’s the safest way to generate good outputs if you’re not very comfortable with copywriting or if you're writing in a language that is not your mother tongue.
Here’s an example of different copywriting styles with Claude-3 and Mistral Large:
Prompt: Craft a 180 characters paragraph explaining why blindly copy AI-generated Content is a terrible strategy for product marketing managers.
Make sure it sounds like natural english. Use simple words and expressions.
Prompt: Craft a 180 characters paragraph explaining why blindly copy AI-generated Content is a terrible strategy for product marketing managers.
Use a playful yet professional copywriting style.
Check our Free prompt Library (see Editorial Guidelines) to access all copywriting styles.
#3. Some words, Ban you Should.
“In the realm of”, “Unleash the power of”…
Some words and expressions just sounds too AI-generated.
Banning these words will increase the quality of your AI outputs.
Here’s a prompt to ensure they don’t get mentioned.
Prompt: Don’t use any of these words in your output. "Juncture", "Cusp", "Hurdles", "Bustling", "Harnessing", "Unveiling The Power", "Realm", "Depicted", "Demistify", "Insurmountable", "New Era", "Poised", "Unravel", "Entanglement", "Unprecedented", "Eerie Connection", "Unliving", "Beacon", "Unleash", "Delve", "Enrich", "Multifaced", "Elevate", "Discover", "Supercharge", "Unlock", "Unleash", "Tailored", "Elegant", "Delve", "Ever-evolving", "Pride", "Realm", "Meticulously", "Grappling", "Weighing", "Picture", "Architect", "Adventure", "Journey", "Embark", "Navigate", "Navigation", "Dazzle", "Tapestry"
#4. The test, you Must Pass
This tips is probably the most important one.
As a general rule, it's best to use AI to assist you, not to do all the work for you. Just copying and pasting what the AI gives is the best way to make your writing sound like a robot wrote it.
So, I would definitely recommend to take the time to review the content and improve it with your own copywriting style.
If you’re in a hurry, you can also use these tools to make sure your writing sounds natural. All of them evaluate how AI-generated your content is likely to be and offers features to rewrite it.
GPTZero, ZeroGPT… ❤️ the naming originality here (Maybe it’s time to hire a Product Marketer?)
Looks like this newsletter did pass the test!
In a Nutshell, AI Padawan ✍🏼
To make your AI-generated content shine:
✅ Use it for the right use cases.
✅ Provide clear instructions. Experiment with different copywriting styles to find what works for you.
✅ Ban overused "AI-sounding" words and phrases to make your content feel more natural and human.
✅ Always review, edit, and refine AI-generated content to add your personal touch.
Remember, AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement!
(By the way it’s been a month already and we just reached 300 subscribers! THANK YOU SO MUCH. )
@lucasnilsson, I appreciate the balanced perspective on what use cases AI is and isn’t good for. (Under #2, did Mistral-Large really produce the exact same output for ‘playful yet professional’ as it did for the first ‘simple’ copywriting style?)