Creating genuine content that reflects your voice and expertise
When using AI tools to generate content, it takes careful editing to avoid giving the impression to prospects, customers, employees, and partners that you generated the content with artificial intelligence. Even advanced tools use repetitive phrasing, generic intros, and a sterile tone.
The tools may also not sync with your corporate voice. Most likely, they won’t convey the specific knowledge of your SMEs. Savvy readers—and AI search engines—are bound to recognize your content as AI-generated.
The Process to Convert Artificial Intelligence
The key to taking on this challenge is to create a process to convert artificial intelligence into genuine intelligence that communicates on-target messaging and resonates with audiences by following these steps:
- Select the right AI engine.
- Develop prompt models for each asset type and sharpen them over time.
- Edit content to read well and remove artificial-sounding language.
- Validate messaging is on target from a marketing perspective.
- Confirm messaging is on target from a technical perspective.
- Revise content based on marketing and technical feedback.
This article focuses on step three—editing content to read well and remove artificial-sounding language.
It All Comes Down to Editing
When generating marketing assets, AI is a great first-draft partner. But it does not replace the human ability to understand tone, flow, and meaning. The difference between content that reads well and content that sounds like AI comes down to editing.
Creation speed does not = connections with your audiences. When you read something that looks fine but somehow feels hollow, you realize what happens when AI content is published without the touch of a human editor.
Why AI Content Needs a Human Touch
Even the most advanced AI models sound artificial:
- Over-explained simple concepts.
- Filler phrases, such as in today’s digital landscape…
- Repeating the same structures: From X to Y, businesses must Z
- Avoiding specificity and emotion.
- Missing subtle audience cues—like when to sound conversational versus authoritative.
Without refinement, AI-written content can make your company sound generic, robotic, boring, or even untrustworthy.
How a Skilled Editor Humanizes AI-Generated Content
When editing AI content, focus on four main areas to convey your genuine intelligence:
Voice and Intent—Read for tone: Does this sound like your brand? A human editor can ensure pieces carry your unique rhythm, perspective, and intent.
Structure and Flow—AI can be verbose and overly linear. Look for places to vary sentence length and rhythm, cut redundant phrasing, and reorder sections for clarity and logic.
Substance and Specificity—Human editors catch what AI can’t:
Real-world context…does the content align with the industry?
Technical nuance…are terms used correctly?
Subtext…is the story persuasive, not just factual?.
A skilled editor injects these attributes along with experience and judgment into the draft to transform informative content into insightful intelligence.
Verification and Enrichment—A human editor verifies every claim, statistic, and cited source. This is especially important where outdated and incorrect information can damage credibility. Beyond accuracy, a human editor enriches marketing assets by adding verified data and updated research. They also incorporate insights from internal SMEs and client interviews, and they include original analysis and use-cases. AI simply can’t invent this naturally.
Next Up: The Marketing Perspective
After making sure your AI content reads well and presents your messaging genuinely, the next step is to validate that your messaging is on target from a marketing perspective. Watch for tips on this in my next blog in January.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving and the holiday season!