(As published in Inside Indiana Business, 4/22/26)
By now, most business owners have experimented with using AI to generate some form of marketing content. A blog post here, a few social media updates there, maybe even a first draft of a white paper or case study. And in many cases, the reaction is the same: “This is pretty good.”
They’re not wrong. Each generation of AI tools is faster, more competent, and capable of producing clean, readable copy in seconds. They can do a lot of routine writing for you — but if you think nobody will notice you’ve outsourced your work, think again. They do have a habit of giving themselves away.
Read enough AI-generated content, and you’ll start to notice patterns. Not subtle ones, either. They’re obvious tells that immediately signal that what you’re reading didn’t come from human fingertips.
One of the biggest tells is the formatting. Everything is neatly segmented with bold, capitalized subheadings and levels of bullet points. The structure is rigid and predictable, reading less like shared knowledge and more like a checklist that’s been filled in.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with subheadings. They can be useful, especially in longer or more technical pieces. But when every section is labeled in the same formulaic way, it starts to feel mechanical, not authentic.
Another giveaway? AI loves to wrap things up with a tidy “conclusion.” Sometimes it even labels it as such. Other times it leans on phrases like “in conclusion” or “to summarize,” followed by a recap of points the reader just finished reading. It’s safe. It’s orderly. And it’s completely unnecessary. Strong writing doesn’t need to announce that it’s ending. It just ends—ideally on a thought that lingers a bit, not one that neatly ties everything up with a bow.
Then there’s the language itself. Certain phrases show up again and again: “in today’s fast-paced world,” “in these challenging times,” “it’s more important than ever,” “businesses must leverage,” “unlock the power of.” These expressions are so overused that they’ve lost any real meaning. They don’t clarify anything. They don’t add substance. They just take up space and make the writing sound generic.
Generic is exactly what you don’t want your words to be. The whole point of publishing—whether it’s an article, a blog post, or a case study—is to differentiate yourself. To show how you think. To give people a sense of what it would be like to work with you. If your content sounds like it could have been written by anyone, it might as well not exist.
This is where many people get tripped up with AI. They assume the output is the finished product. They copy it, paste it, maybe tweak a word or two, and move on. From a time-saving perspective, that feels like a win. From a marketing perspective, it’s a missed opportunity.
AI is best used as a starting point, not a substitute for judgment. It can help you organize ideas, suggest angles, and get past the blank page. But it doesn’t know your business the way you do. It doesn’t know your customers, your experiences, or the nuances that make your perspective valuable. And it definitely doesn’t know how you sound. That last part matters more than most people realize.
Voice is what makes writing feel human. It’s the difference between something that’s just technically accurate and something that feels real and spoken. It’s what allows a reader to hear a person behind the words instead of a system assembling them. If you’re going to use AI, your job is to put that voice back in.
Strip out the obvious tells. Get rid of the stock phrases. Break up the predictable structure. Add specifics—details that could only come from your experience. Adjust the rhythm so it sounds like something you would actually say. Sometimes that means rewriting sections entirely. In others, it’s a matter of tightening and sharpening what’s already there. Either way, it requires involvement.
The good news is you don’t have to start from scratch. The heavy lifting—the initial draft—is already done. What you’re doing is shaping it into something that reflects you, not the tool that generated it. Used that way, AI can speed up the process without diluting the result. Used the other way, it creates a sea of content that all sounds the same.
And if you’re trying to stand out in a crowded market, that’s the one outcome you can’t afford.