I use AI every day. Claude helps me outline, draft, pressure-test ideas, and move faster than I could alone. I'm not here to tell you AI is bad.
But I can spot AI writing from the second paragraph. And if I can, your readers can too, even if they can't name what's bothering them. They just know something feels off. A little too smooth. A little too everything.
Here's what to look for.
The em dash problem
This one is almost unfair at this point. AI loves an em dash. The way a nervous writer loves a semicolon. If you open a piece of content and em dashes are showing up every other sentence, a human did not write that. Or if they did, they didn't edit it.
One em dash in a piece? Fine. Three? You've got a draft, not a finished product.
The thesaurus word that sticks out
Good writing has a consistent register. The vocabulary feels like it belongs to one person. AI writing occasionally drops in a word that's technically correct but tonally wrong. "Endeavor" in a sentence full of plain English. "Utilize" when "use" was right there the whole time.
It's the equivalent of wearing a tuxedo jacket with jeans. You notice it immediately. You can't not notice it.
"Excited" and its relatives
AI defaults to performed enthusiasm. We're excited to share. This is a remarkable opportunity. We're thrilled to announce. Real humans writing real things don't write like that, at least not without irony.
If the emotional temperature of a piece feels higher than the situation warrants, that's a tell. Nobody is excited about a policy update. Nobody is thrilled about a deadline reminder. This is especially true in internal communications, where employees have a finely tuned radar for hollow warmth. Write the actual feeling, or don't write a feeling at all.
The structure is too perfect
AI produces beautifully balanced content. Every section roughly the same length. Every paragraph with a clear topic sentence and a tidy close. Three examples, every time. It reads like a content template, because essentially it is.
Real writing is messier. Some sections are longer because the idea needed more room. Some paragraphs are one sentence because that's all it needed. The structure serves the content. Not the other way around.
Nothing is actually said
This is the hardest one to explain and the easiest to feel. AI writing can cover a topic thoroughly without saying anything specific, opinionated, or true about it. It presents information. It rarely takes a position.
Read a piece and ask: what does the writer actually believe here? If you can't find a real answer, you're probably reading something that was generated rather than written. This is where brand voice matters most. A strong voice has a point of view baked in. Without it, there's nothing for AI to replicate, and nothing for readers to connect with.
So what do you do about it?
Use AI. Seriously. It's a legitimate tool and pretending otherwise is a waste of your time. But treat the output as a first draft, not a finished product. The draft is research. Your job is to go in and make it sound like a person with opinions wrote it.
That means cutting the em dashes. Flattening the vocabulary back to your register. Replacing "we're excited to announce" with whatever you actually mean. Breaking the perfect structure where a real thought needs more room. And adding the one thing AI genuinely cannot supply: a point of view.
That's not a small thing. That's the whole thing.
If your brand's content is coming out of the AI pipeline and going straight to publish, it's worth a conversation. Find out how I work, or take a look at what a finished product actually looks like. When you're ready, let's talk.