Yesterday a client asked for my feedback on a piece of content he wrote. I noticed an overuse of rhetorical questions, staccato phrasing, and em-dashes.
I know my client wrote most of this content and then passed it through ChatGPT to polish it.
The problem is that AI tends to have a particular style of writing...
My friend Kayla and I have this inside joke where we send each other screenshots of people on Instagram who post a personal reflection, but the copy is 100% AI generated.
The joke is that it was supposed to be a personal insight, content meant to move hearts and connect...
But the minute we spot AI, the disconnect happens. And the whole piece (and the author) loses credibility.
How many articles are AI generated?
The SEO firm Graphite has been tracking the proportion of online articles written by AI.
Their recent paper shows that 52% of articles found online are AI generated. They analyzed 65,000 random URLs found in Common Crawl, and used Surfer AI detection to determine if it was generated with AI.
Now, distinguishing between human-written and AI-written language is tricky.
Graphite tested Surfer's accuracy by analyzing content expected to be written by humans (published between January 2020 and November 2022, before ChatGPT's adoption) and their own set of AI-generated content.
Surfer had a 4.2% false positive rate (labeling human-written articles as AI-generated) and a 0.6% false negative rate (labeling AI-written articles as human). So I'd say their findings are very accurate.
Why You Should Write Your Own Copy
The biggest reason why you should write your own copy is to protect your brand.
The relationships you hold with your audience as a thought-leader are the most important aspect of your business as a trusted advisor.
There is a person I met who posts almost every day on LinkedIn; but their content is so clearly AI-generated that I feel no respect for their thought-leadership.
Knowing how little effort they appear to have put into their content (perception is key, even if you didn't overuse AI you still have to be mindful of this) makes me feel that it's not worth my time, and does not merit a response.
Overusing AI not only gives the power of your personal brand away, but it also commoditizes your relationship with your audience.
DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN.
Some reports estimated that 90% of online content would be generated by AI by 2026. AI risks choking on its own exhaust by getting trained on the content it's outputting.
In the sea of AI sameness, be bold, be edgy, disrupt and own your voice!
How to Actually Use AI In Your Content
Now, I use AI every day. Here are some ways I like to use AI:
Run research for you.
AI is great for running research on any topic you are researching. You can ask it to ELI5 (explain like I am 5) and it's a great source of material. Expect about 80% accuracy, so always check the source.
Spot typos and poor English.
I write my own copy, then I plug it into Claude (my preferred one) and ask it to check for typos or poor English.
Speech to text.
I like to record myself and submit the transcript to AI, asking it to create a written article from my voice note, keeping the very same language I use in the transcript.
Select, don't delegate.
I like the way I write. Whenever I am improving my article with AI, I am always hyper-selective of every piece of copy. If I add a line, it's because I like it, I own it, and I want to use it. It feels like me.
Read your final piece out loud.
My best piece of advice is to write like you speak. This makes people feel close to you. So next time you release an article, read it out loud. If it feels natural, if it feels like you, then it's good to go.