Writing with an AI accent

When we chat with AI a lot, we risk sounding like AI when we write. It’s an extension of picking up an accent from the people we talk to.

Writers come into conversational contact with AI for all kinds of reasons: talking about grammar, discussing ideas, generating drafts, and asking for feedback.

I used AI for marketing advice when I first set up this website. I wrote the webpages and ran them through AI for feedback on my positioning.

While doing this, my curiosity (and vanity) got the better of me. I’d ask AI what it “thought” of my writing and what sort of person I seemed to be.

Eventually, I noticed that my webpage text had developed the anonymous voice of a very smooth multinational corporation.

My writing was too polished and lacked the conversational quality that supports readability.

I had picked up AI’s “business” accent.

I rewrote the entire website and stopped asking AI for any kind of feedback on my writing style.

I also noticed that using AI for marketing advice had led me astray. Some of my content made me sound like a technical editor in STEM, and I’m not.

It drifted in that direction because I’d told AI about my work in quality assurance proofreading but hadn’t mentioned my humanities background.

I’ve gone back to writing in the traditional way. I’m enjoying it much more and it feels healthier. As I’m a professional editor, I need to keep exercising those writing muscles.

Editing for AI text

If you ask me to, I can carry out sentence-level rewriting to make a text sound more human. This involves protecting the original structure and content while rewording individual sentences.

I should be clear that I’m not a marketing copywriter. I wouldn’t come up with new ideas or hooks for you. My work draws on my first language (English), editing experience, and editorial training.

Note: This is a heavily edited version of a previous blog post.