AI is no longer optional for writers, unfortunately.
Even if you don’t use it, you’re surrounded by it.
AI’s the pen, the brainstorming partner, the editor, and sometimes the friend who has ideas you didn’t.
But there’s a problem.
If we use AI the way most people do (who aren’t writers), you end up sounding exactly the same as everyone else who uses AI.
Polished. Generic. Full of clichés about “leveraging innovation.”
That’s content. It can work. But it isn’t (good) writing, right?
If you want to write human with AI, meaning your words feel alive, real, and like you, you need to use AI differently.
And it takes some work and time.
Here’s how I like to do it.
1. Start With Your Ideas,
Most people seems to use AI’s ideas to write content. But why? I bet you have some cool ones yourself.
Typical approach: “Hey AI, write me an article on how to be productive.”
Result: You get something that sounds like… an AI magazine on productivity.
Better approach: Tell AI what you think first.
“Here’s my take on productivity. It’s mostly procrastination disguised as planning. I believe most tools waste time. I prefer simple tools. Can you turn that into a strong intro, keeping my sarcasm?’
AI is a mirror. If you give it “nothing with substance”, it returns “nothing with substance”.
If you feed it your opinions and quirks, it will work with them. Might still not sound perfect. But it’s a good start.
Never ask AI “what should I say?”, always tell it what you already believe. It can pinpoint your mistakes and correct you, too.
2. Keep the Structure, Kill the Voice
AI is fantastic at structure: organizing ideas, outlining sections, chaos → clarity.
But AI is terrible at voice: emotion, tension, little moments of humanity that make writing unique.
Also, AI humor is pretty barebones.
So split the tasks:
- Use AI to structure your chaotic thoughts
- Use your own voice to make it pop
3. Inject Imperfection On Purpose
Humans:
- Use half sentences.
- Contradict themselves.
- Ask questions mid-paragraph.
- Change their mind in real time.
I do that all the time.
AI doesn’t. Unless you tell it to.
Prompt tweak:
“Rewrite this paragraph to sound like someone talking to a friend over coffee. Include a self-doubt moment, a rhetorical question, and remove any ‘therefore’ or ‘in conclusion’ type phrases.”
Those cliche catchphrases AI always puts into every intro and outro… remove them entirely. They suck.
4. Use AI to Argue With You
This is actually fun.
Don’t just ask AI to agree or expand. Ask it to challenge you.
“Here’s my argument: Substack is better than Medium for long-term business. Give me the strongest counterargument, and make it so good it makes me question myself.”
This makes me think. And AI might come up with surprising ideas and facts. I probably wouldn’t have thought of those.
5. Don’t Let AI Finish Your Thought
Always do the final pass yourself. Because AI isn’t you. It’s good. It’s getting better every second. It might sound human in no time. But it isn’t you.
- Add a personal story.
- Remove any sentence that feels too smooth.
- Break a paragraph in the middle of a thought. White space is nice and AI seems to not like it too much.
- Add something odd, funny, or vulnerable. Ai isn’t quirky.
6. Prompt the Why
Human writing is about why you care. AI doesn’t care. That’s a huge difference.
So your prompts must include:
- Your emotional point of view
- Your personal stake in the topic
- The mood you want the reader to feel
Why Most People Don’t Use AI That Way
Because it kills the purpose of AI most of the time.
The majority of people use AI to write because they don’t want to spend the time writing.
But to make AI sound more human, you need to spend time optimizing the AI output. So, it’s not an automation, not a real time-saver.
That’s why good writing and bad writing can both be done with AI. It takes a good writer to make the difference.
The Bottom Line
AI is here to stay. Ignoring it won’t help. Condemning it won’t, either.
Because even if every writer used AI to write, there’d still be good writing and bad writing.
It’s not the tool.
We are not competing against AI-generated content. We are competing against humans who don’t know how to or don’t want to write better with AI.
And let’s be honest, the internet was full of bad writing, generic stuff, copied content, and fluff long before AI came along.