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If you've had the bad luck of arriving at the airport on a day of thick fog, you know you'll probably have to wait for the weather to clear before takeoff. Once in the air, though, that fog — so persistent and blinding on the ground — doesn't seem to be a problem for the pilot.
Wait… isn't this an article about artificial intelligence? Why am I talking about clouds and planes? I confess: I'm still struggling to get back into routine after the summer holidays. But this meteorological reflection isn't as off-topic as it seems.
AI is flooding online content
Business strategist Daniel Priestley explains that AI-generated content is like that thick fog covering everything we see online. It's easier than ever to produce a text, an image or even a video with AI. And, as a result, it's harder than ever to tell which content is genuinely valuable and which is just noise. The competition for audience attention has become fierce, and content creators have it really tough to stand out.
But… what about the plane in the metaphor? Luckily, after takeoff the sky turns blue and you can travel at 800 km/h. In other words: if you manage to set yourself apart from the generic, boring, empty content, competition is minimal and results take off. Which leads to the million-dollar question: what should we do to make our content stand out in a digital environment saturated with AI?
Signs that a text smells like AI
I'm the first to use AI to create content, and I love it. The problem is that many creators treat it as a substitute for human judgment, and they publish posts with no charm or care, without editing a single comma.
Source: Marketoonist.
Each tool has its own quirks, but there's a set of symptoms repeated so often they're practically a trademark:
- Generic, grandiose openings, of the "We live in an ever-evolving world…" or "Technology has transformed the way we live" variety.
- Connector overload: "moreover," "on the other hand," "in short". If every paragraph starts with a connector, it gets heavy fast.
- Stock phrases like "there's no doubt that…", "when it comes to…", "it's essential to bear in mind…", "not only X, but also Y", etc.
- Over-the-top motivational tone. Everything ends with "you can do it too!" or "this is a turning point."
- No personal voice. No personal references, no anecdotes, no recognizable style. Anyone could have written it.
- The rocket emoji 🚀. It sounds like a joke, and I wish it were, but every time I see a LinkedIn post with this symbol, I take it as an unmistakable sign that it was written with AI.
So what's wrong with using AI to create content?
Nothing! I see no problem with us using the best technology available to communicate more effectively. Rejecting a text because it was written with AI is like rejecting email in favor of carrier pigeons. If a blog post takes me 4 hours without AI and one hour with it, bring it on.
What we can't allow is for AI use to drag down quality. I'll say it again: if you use AI to create content, you have to make sure it's still good. There's the catch: there's no point in publishing 15 social posts a week if none of them are good. So we have to learn to use AI not just to generate content, but to generate exceptional content that lets us take off and stand out from the rest.
3 tactics to improve your AI-created content
Before getting into advanced tricks, let's state the obvious: you need to review and edit AI responses, always, always, always. Responses generated with ChatGPT or any other tool are just drafts, and you're the one responsible for giving them the spark that makes them shine. With that out of the way, let's move on to a few more sophisticated tactics:
1. Train ChatGPT in your voice
I have a custom GPT trained on a large corpus of my LinkedIn posts and newsletter. That way, it has identified my style and can reproduce it with reasonable fidelity. So I start from a more advanced draft, closer to what I'm looking for.
2. Use personal stories
There's something you have that AI never will: a life. Seriously! Lean on your personal anecdotes and make sure to carve out your own distinctive style that sets you apart from the rest (and from AI). In college I was taught that, under no circumstances, should I use the first person in "serious" writing. Now I make a point of including it whenever I can.
3. Don't be so perfect
AI is a specialist in producing academic, polished, flawless texts. What's hard nowadays is publishing real, genuine, imperfect content. Did you think it was a coincidence that I wrote "college" instead of "university" in the paragraph above? No. I do it on purpose so that, as you read, you feel like we're chatting about AI and content over coffee. And that closeness connects with the audience — a lot.
In a world where AI can generate tons of content in seconds, the real competitive edge isn't speed — it's authenticity. The fog of generic, predictable text will keep covering the internet, but those who take the time to add their voice, their stories and their human touch will fly far above it.
I asked ChatGPT to write a closing paragraph for my article. Did you notice? 😜
