You can tell within two lines. Somebody posts, you read the opening, and you know a machine wrote it before you have worked out how you know. Your readers have the same detector, tuned by every book they finished and every person they listened to. That detector is good news for you. Writing that sounds like a person gets read, and everything else gets scrolled past.

I teach thousands of people how to write with AI . They expect me to tell them that AI writing is bad unless you prompt well. The writing is fine. It’s just bland. What comes out of a large language model like ChatGPT or Claude without you in it belongs to nobody in particular, and your reader works that out in a second.

Everybody produces with AI now, so producing with AI stopped being the advantage. Writing things people want to read is the advantage. When a reader spots a machine in your work they stop reading, and years of expertise get undermined by one lazy prompt. Here are 5 signs your content sounds like everybody else, and what to do about each one.

The 5 signs your writing gives itself away as AI

It uses words you never use

You have never used the word delve in a conversation in your life. The contrast reframe gives it away faster, the sentence that dismisses one thing to introduce another. It is not about the tools, it is about the thinking. Nobody has ever said that to another person, and once you see the construction you find it everywhere. Use my ban list for this, covering the words and the structures that tell a reader a machine got there first.

Read your draft and mark every word you would not say to somebody standing in front of you. If anything is happening “quietly,” make sure it isn’t.Then do the same with the structures. The rule of three in every sentence. Hunt for the question the writer asks and answers in the same breath, and the setup phrase that promises a revelation and delivers a tip. If you would not say it, delete it.

Read a paragraph of your last post back and listen for a person in it. The technical tells are there if you go looking. The tidy sentence lengths, the tidy structure, the three items in every list. It’s missing vibes. You have read enough writing by people to know the difference within a couple of sentences, and so has everybody who follows you.

Put as much of you into the writing as possible and let AI organize what comes out. Your stories and the way you explain something when nobody is recording. Start from a voice note or a message you sent a friend, then ask AI to tidy the structure and nothing else. The tidying is the job. You supply the soul.

It could have been written by anyone

Somebody reads your post, agrees with all of it, and forgets it instantly. Every sentence in there is defensible. Nothing in it would make a reader stop and decide whether they agree with you. Writing that takes no position reads the same whoever published it. Your name at the top is the only thing separating yours from the next one.

Give AI your strong opinions before it writes a word, and refuse the softer version when it offers you one. Write the way you would give unsolicited advice to a friend. It’s the register. Somebody who tells you the truth over coffee, with no hedging and no committee in the room. Nobody forwards writing that agrees with everybody.

It is too perfect to be yours

Every sentence is the same length. The grammar is immaculate and the transitions are smooth. Not a typo in sight. Humans make typos. Best-selling books go to print with typos in them and sell anyway, and nobody asks for their money back.

Perfectionism stopped being useful the day AI got good. That is a release if you have been sitting on drafts waiting for them to be right. Leave the sentence that trails off. Keep the paragraph that went on too long. You had momentum. Publish the thing with one word out of place. A little gnarly reads as human.

It teaches without revealing how you do it

You explain the five steps of a process you use but never mention the thing you do differently. The advice is solid. But the piece reads like a summary of your industry instead of a message from somebody who actually does the work. But you’re better than that. You’re the person who made the mistakes and found a way around them. That’s what your audience wants to hear.

Say the things you don’t say to anyone else. The decision you make when the process goes wrong, the part of your method you assumed was too obvious to mention. Wait until you are riled up before you produce anything. Go on a rant, record it, then let AI organize the transcript afterwards. Passion in, passion out. That makes your writing human.

AI slop is everywhere: how to really write with AI

Everybody has the same tools open, so that stopped being the separator. What separates you is a point of view somebody wants to read. You have been building one for years without putting it on the page. Give AI your opinions first. Leave the rough edges in. You are better than letting one lazy prompt undermine work that took you a decade to get good at.

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