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Are you caught in the AI trap? It’s easy to fall into the convenience of letting AI handle your social media content, but there’s a risk of losing the authentic human connection that makes social media so powerful. In this post, I’m sharing the telltale signs your content is AI generated and provide practical strategies for ensuring your AI-assisted posts retain a genuine, human touch.
How AI Works for Writing
AI writing tools operate on complex algorithms that analyze and mimic human language patterns. Mimic human language patterns” is the important part. AI “mimics” patterns. It doesn’t yet have real intelligence to answer questions. In fact, it’s very similar to your phone’s autoprediction feature. Ever participated in one of those prompts that says “Type in XYZ and use autopredict to finish the sentence”? How much sense did your sentence make? Well, AI tools are only slightly better than that and work on the same principle.
In my Buy Nothing group on Facebook, because I often type “Smoke-free, pet friendly home. Pickup on Main Street”, my phone will actually autopopulate those words so I can quickly tap them in, instead of typing the sentence out letter by letter. That’s a form of AI writing.
While these tools can efficiently generate content based on specific prompts, they often lack the capacity for emotional depth, personal experiences, and the subtlety of human conversation. Remember, AI is a tool for efficiency, not a replacement for human creativity and connection.
Forrester predicts thinly customized AI content will degrade purchase experience for 70% of buyers. That’s HUGE. Your customers don’t want to see signs your content is AI generated! It degrades trust and credibility. And in a B2B environment, that can make your customers feel like you just don’t understand their particular situation and needs.
10 Telltale Signs Your Content is AI-Generated
Repetitive Language Patterns
AI tends to reuse the same phrases and sentence structures, leading to monotonous and predictable content. This repetition lacks the creativity and variability a human naturally brings to their writing. AI isn’t likely to start sentences with “and” or “But”, which are things I do all the time in my writing. AI writes like the average of all humans. You don’t.
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Absence of Personal Stories
Unlike human content creators, AI obviously cannot draw from personal experiences. This results in content that is nformative but lacks the relatable and engaging elements personal stories provide. I’ve always had difficulty thinking of personal stories to include in my blogs and social media, so I’m really focusing on this now to ensure my content stands out.
Broad, Generic Responses
AI-generated content often sticks to generalities and avoids taking a strong stance on topics. It lacks the nuanced opinions and specific insights that come from a human’s unique perspective and expertise.
Formal and Rigid Tone
Every time I ask AI to write a blog post I get “In conclusion” before the summary. If I’ve written that twice on my blog I’d be surprised. It’s way too formal for me. AI struggles with casual, conversational tone because everyone’s casual conversational vocabulary is different.
Inconsistent Style and Voice
AI may fluctuate in writing style, failing to maintain the consistent voice that is crucial for brand identity. This inconsistency can confuse your audience and dilute your brand’s message.
Missing or Misunderstood Context
AI can miss the mark on understanding the broader context or cultural nuances of a topic. It may produce content that is technically correct but fails to capture the deeper relevance or implications.
Ask ChatGPT to summarize a political event. It might compile information based on historical data and general knowledge but miss the latest developments or public sentiment. For example, it could generate a generic overview of the war in Gaza, but it won’t understand the recent developments or public sentiment on both sides. And it certainly isn’t going to tell you which side it thinks is “right”.
Lack of Genuine Humor
Humor is a complex, human aspect of communication that AI often fails to replicate successfully. AI-generated jokes or attempts at humor can come across as forced, awkward, or completely off the mark. I asked ChatGPT to write a joke about “AI writing” and here’s what it produced: “Why did the AI refuse to write a book about anti-gravity? Because it couldn’t deal with subjects that were too uplifting!” I’m not even sure I get what’s supposed to be funny about it!
Factual Errors or Misrepresentations
While AI can process vast amounts of information, it can also misinterpret facts or present outdated information. This can lead to inaccuracies that could harm your credibility. Have you heard about AI “hallucinations”?
Limited Emotional Resonance
AI lacks the ability to genuinely connect with human emotions. Its content may provide the facts but miss the emotional undertones that resonate with readers and create a meaningful impact.
Overemphasis on Keywords and SEO
AI tools often focus heavily on SEO optimization, sometimes at the expense of readability and engagement. This can result in content that feels contrived or overly engineered for search engines rather than real people. It’s almost a return to the old days of keyword stuffing for SEO. Yes, AI can help you work in your keywords, but you still need to write for humans.
Escaping the AI Trap: Humanizing Your AI Writing
Edit, edit, edit
A few of the things I’m constantly removing or editing from my AI written content:
- “In a world where/that”;
- fancy words I just wouldn’t use. In this very post I removed “akin”;
- unnecessary “that”;
- passive voice, although I know I don’t catch it all.
- “In the XYZ game”
- “game changer” or “game changing”
- cliches. This one is harder. I use cliches sometimes. Over-use of cliched phrases is a red flag for me.
Fact-Check everything
AI will absolutely make up examples for you. If you can’t put in an example with a brand name, or specifics, or a link, I’m going to question whether or not it’s real. I see people using completely made up examples with no real substance daily on LinkedIn. I recently saw an example online where someone was writing about a well-known holiday and their AI refused to give it the correct date for the holiday. Ask your AI to give you links to the information it’s using and ensure it analysed it correctly.
Infuse Personal Touches
Can you spot all the places in this article where I infused my own experience, word choices, or opinions/thoughts? If you don’t add your own touch, it’s not going to sound like you.
Engage Directly with Your Audience
Use AI for initial ideas but interact personally. Yes you can set up AI programs, bots and apps to answer questions automatically or reply to comments on social media, but be very careful with these tools. Automated FAQs and delivery of a resource is a good use. However, automating your replies to Instagram Stories or comments on your posts is dangerous territory. Google is full of examples of automated replies gone wrong.
Use AI for Inspiration & Organization
If writing just isn’t your thing, or you struggle to come up with ideas, AI can help you get started faster. Many times it’s easier to edit a badly written article than to start from scratch. So ask ChatGPT for blog or post ideas for your niche or to outline a post, ebook, video, article or proposal and go from there.
Use AI for SEO
Even if you’ve written your entire blog or post by yourself you can use AI to tweak the bits and bobs you have trouble with:
- SEO research
- Excerpts
- Meta descriptions
- Adding in keywords
- Creating custom tweets
- Editing
Since I’ve started using ChatGPT to help with my blog writing I’ve produced some of my best blogs ever. I’ve had more responses from readers saying they loved/liked/learned from my posts. That’s because I’m using AI to HELP write the posts. It helps me structure things, brainstorm, find the pieces I’m missing. But it’s still me.
Falling into the AI trap is easy but escaping it is just as easy and it’s essential for maintaining the authenticity your audience craves. By implementing these strategies to humanize your AI writing you can use AI as a tool to enhance rather than detract from your social media presence. Remember, the key is to balance efficiency with empathy and personalization. Your audience values genuine interactions, and that’s something AI just cannot replicate.
