Why AI-written posts sound like AI, and how to fix it

The short answer: AI copy sounds generic when the model has nothing specific to work with. Given a thin brief it falls back on the safest, most average phrasing it knows, because that is the statistically likely thing to say. The fix is almost never a cleverer prompt. It is giving it real detail about your business. The prompts that force a model to include one, rather than polish an empty sentence, are collected in 18 ChatGPT prompts for social media.

We build a tool that writes social posts, so this is the problem we spend most of our time on. It would be easier to claim we have solved it. We have not solved it, and neither has anyone else. What we can do is explain precisely where it comes from, because once you see the mechanism the fixes are obvious.

The tells everyone recognises

You already know these, even if you have never named them. They are the reason a post can be grammatically perfect and still make you wince.

• Opening with a rhetorical question nobody asked. "Looking to elevate your morning routine?"
• Abstract nouns instead of things. "Solutions", "experiences", "journeys" where a real business would say coffee, haircut, invoice.
• The triple. Three adjectives where one would do, because balanced lists feel complete to a model.
• Grand closing statements that promise transformation over a nine euro product.
• Enthusiasm with no specific cause. Excitement about nothing in particular reads as hollow.

Generic output is not the model failing. It is the model correctly averaging a brief that contained nothing specific.

Why it happens

A language model predicts likely text. Ask it to write a post for a coffee shop and give it nothing else, and the most likely coffee shop post in existence is exactly the bland one you are picturing. It is not being lazy. It is doing the only reasonable thing with the information it has, which is producing the average of everything it has seen.

This is why prompt tricks disappoint. Telling a model to "write like a human" or "be more casual" changes the register but not the substance. It still has no facts, so you get the same empty post in a friendlier voice. Specificity is the only real input.

How I make AI writing sound more human

What actually fixes it

• Feed it facts. Names, prices, sourcing, how long something takes, what people ask you. One concrete detail rescues a whole post.
• Cut the first sentence. The opening line is where models put their throat-clearing. The post usually starts better without it.
• Replace abstractions with objects. If a phrase would fit any business in your industry, it is doing no work.
• Keep one imperfection. A slightly odd word, a short sentence, a real opinion. Uniform polish is the tell.
• Say the specific thing you would say to a customer standing in front of you, then let the tool tidy it.

What we do about it in the product

Our whole onboarding exists because of this problem. We read your website before writing anything, because a model with your actual services, tone and audience produces different output to one guessing from your industry. We also ask about voice and let you store facts about the business, and those get threaded into every generation rather than sitting in a settings page doing nothing.

The part we deliberately do not automate is the final judgement. A post can clear every quality check and still be wrong for the week you are having. That is why nothing publishes without you approving it, and why we would rather you edit one sentence than accept five posts unread.