AI-generated content moved from something we dabbled in to now a full-fledged boom in content creation. However, as SEOs and marketers, we face a unique challenge: How do we still connect authentically with our human audience? And should we be using so much AI in what we publish?
Since AI delivers so many advantages in efficiency and scale, it’s best to embrace it the right way. We still owe it to our audiences to put our personal stamp on our content. The balance comes from one essential step: humanize AI content.
What exactly does it mean to humanize AI content? To me, this is taking out the generic feeling that the text could come from anyone—or any thing. You’re adding stories and examples to make your writing more relatable. You’re adding opinions and a point of view to differentiate your content from others. And at the very minimum, you’re removing the patterns and tells that AI is notorious for. (It loves clichés.)
There’s more, too. AI can get facts wrong. That’s being generous; sometimes it just hallucinates statements, and it’s up to you to get it right.
When AI content lacks a human touch, it can fall flat. Here are some other examples:
These instances highlight the need for a more personalized approach. By humanizing AI content, we can build better connections with our customers and our audiences. Not only does that create a stronger experience, it sets a standard for ownership and accountability in our work.
Ask yourself a different question: what do you hope to accomplish with this work? Is this for SEO? Product descriptions or a landing page? While you might have luck with AI giving you fresh ways to describe a product you've worked with for years, SEO is another beast.
If you are trying to churn out content so that it pulls in traffic from search results, an AI-only approach won't cut it. You need human involvement to elevate your content and make it worth ranking. This satisfies Google, and it serves your audience.
While AI may be able to produce reader-friendly content, you should be aiming for reader-respecting content. That means being mindful of their experience:
Your audience reads your content because of trust and authority. Maybe they like your product and decide that it makes you a welcome voice about related topics. Or is it your connection on social media that makes them want to hear more from you?
If you’ve gotten them to click to your page, you should deliver what they expect. They’re clicking for your perspective. AI can help expand your topic and give you a head start on writing, but you should offer your readers something only you can produce.
The Search Team at Google has asserted that it does not penalize sites for using AI in their content. However, the kind of content that ranks highest keeps people engaged, it includes a specific point of view, and it is authoritative. We also know that Google’s emphasis on helpful content takes an understanding of what the reader needs to get out of their search. It needs to be more substantial—giving real-world examples that most people can relate to. Humanizing AI content is a must to achieve any of those qualities.
As we continue to leverage AI content creation, ethical challenges are growing with it. Some critics feel that using AI-generated content is a disingenuous way of taking advantage of your audience’s trust.
One other way that AI-generated content is seen as unethical is that it becomes part of a repeated loop.
Since the core of AI is learning and training itself, it pulls from what's already available to teach it. AI content about lions and tigers comes from available content about lions and tigers (in a very simplistic explanation). If it were to pull in an errant piece about female lions having stripes, that detail is now likely to be repeated in an AI-generated piece as fact. That one gets published, and now there are more resources feeding the system that says female lions have stripes. A person doing good-faith research might be pass along the idea because they are seeing this repeated in multiple, unrelated posts.
That's a very basic and unlikely example, but it illustrates the criticism about AI being left unchecked. This becomes a greater issue when these closed loops block out fresh ideas and untapped voices. We're confirming our own biases and keeping any growth from developing.
AI systems can inadvertently perpetuate biases that have been introduced. It might even be on the scale of a system “learning” your brand voice and writing style. So yes, it’s possible to prevent this at a personal level. To do that, it’s important to:
Remember, ethical AI content isn't just about avoiding mistakes – it's about actively promoting fairness, inclusivity, and accuracy in your messaging.
If you’ve read this far, I assume that you are on board with humanizing AI content, but you could use some pointers. This might sound a little meta, but one of the best side effects of having worked with AI-generated content is finding those small details that make it stand out when compared to human-written content.
So thanks, AI, for teaching me what’s off about you.
Some of these tips will be about what to remove and some will be about what to add.
Adding a human touch covers everything from oversight, removing unintended patterns, adding personalization, and making your content more relatable to the people you’re writing for.
This is the “remove” part of humanizing your AI-written text. It’s not as simple as updating your prompts to not use phrases on your list. You will need to find patterns in the AI-written content that could be specific to your work only.
For example, writing tools try to learn your style over time so it can produce output that matches what you’d write on your own. And once it learns a characteristic, it loves to repeat it. This could look like intros that have a quirky analogy at the beginning. It’s fine to have in an article, but when this is repeated across every page, it turns into a distracting habit.
You will also want to remove some of the “tells” that peppers in across multiple writing tools. You’ve probably seen the flowery language that doesn’t feel authentic. Another stand-out is AI’s use of bullet points with a short description and a snappy rewording of what it just listed.
These tells, themselves, do not make for bad writing. But used repeatedly, they stand out. They take the reader out of the page and make them notice the writing itself. That's not an experience that's going to make people trust your content or want to stick around.
Fact Check Everything. This could be the top reason that AI content needs good human oversight. One of the challenges of AI in writing is its tendency to fill the gaps with incorrect or outdated information. Or, without anything to answer your question, it could fabricate details so that there’s something to share.
I tested an AI-writing tool by asking it the price of a SpyFu subscription. It skipped over the hundreds of instances where it could have pulled the right answer and instead told me an odd price that hadn’t been used outside of a random test from late 2022.
AI prioritizes output for the sake of output. You need to look out for your business and your reputation for reliability. Confirm your facts, metrics, and quotes.
If you don’t know who your audience is, research their habits and what they respond to. I don’t like to focus on demographic personas, but I love knowing about preferences. If your products are tailored to more advanced users in your space, your content does not have to cover too much with introductory materials. You have room to speak to a more knowledgeable user and reflect that in your content choices. Your audience might prefer longer, detailed thought leadership content. Or maybe they want fast-paced snippets that translate well in social media.
With a clear picture of your audience’s needs, tailor your content's tone and style to resonate with them. Make sure that shines through by rewriting your AI content to match it.
There are elements that AI usually can’t produce without it being awkward. Fortunately these are the exact tools you can use to make the content itself more relatable to your audience:
Remember, relatable examples are your secret weapon. If you're explaining a complex concept, use analogies or real-life scenarios that your audience can easily understand and connect with.
It also matters where you use these. Your analogies are better saved for introducing a topic. Stories make fantastic bookends to tie your article together.
Stories are uniquely human. They help us connect and understand, and they play a strong role in humanizing your AI content.
Humans are hardwired for stories. By incorporating storytelling techniques into your AI-generated content, you can create a powerful emotional connection with your audience.
I mentioned short form and long-form stories. Short form stories are quick asides that help make an example stick. They take just a few lines to create a situation that your audience can remember and pull from. A long form story is more about technique—using storytelling in your marketing.
You can adopt the classic Hero's Journey to make your marketing text appeal to humans at their core.
Structure your content around the classic hero's journey:
This narrative arc can be applied to case studies, product descriptions, and even how-to guides, making your content more engaging and memorable.
Your humanized content will read better. I know that's subjective, but it could help to keep notes of what to look for and patterns that you notice. It might take a few passes on different articles for you to pick up on AI tells.
Ask a colleague to review it for you. Does it feel like something they'd want to read, or does it read like someone is talking AT them? Don't tell them that you're trying to pass off AI, because people take things as a challenge, and you want a natural reaction. Honest feedback will help you know when you're doing it well, but your engagement metrics will be the true gauge.
You've taken on the challenge to improve your content by adding a human touch. With any growth, there's an understandably strong pull to see how you're progressing. AI detector scores almost have that lure of instant gratification. You might think of pitting your new content style against an a detection tool to see if you can fool it.
It's tempting, but don't get caught in that trap.
Trying to beat a score isn't the point. You should be making an honest effort to add perspective, accuracy, and trust in a reader-friendly format. All of that is far better for your readers, but it might still trigger a lower score than what the first draft has.
These tools are too new, unstandardized, and untested to give you anything more than suggestions. You could end up changing good human-written elements based on what AI tells you. A bit of irony there, dontcha think?
And even a good score could give you a false sense of security. The danger is that by chasing a score you make that the focus and end up choosing a bad path just to please the scoring system.
RivalFlow’s Director of SEO Dan Silber pointed out the potential over-gamification with these tools, “At this point, you’re just writing for the score, not for the user.” He offered a familiar comparison: These are like keyword density scores that some tools have built into them, suggesting that you ramp up the number of times a keyword is used in your article. It's outdated and misguided, and it could backfire.
You will undoubtedly hear about new advances in AI technology that chases the human factor.
These developments could go far in making AI content more engaging and personalized. However, the human touch remains irreplaceable in putting out meaningful content that exists to serve your audience.
Understand that you might be asked to not use AI to generate any content. Period. Whether it's because of ethical conflicts, industry rules, or in an educational setting, trying to humanize it won't be enough.
If you ultimately decide not to use AI in your writing, you can still benefit from other uses. AI is a superb research assistant, offering a quick summary where it's needed or links to more resources. Consider these options for getting a nice efficiency bump while keeping your content 100% human.
Many AI writing tools start with an AI generated outline up front. Next, that outline pushes into AI-generated titles and headers to follow. It pieces them together after that. You get the idea. It’s that first outline that could help guide your ideas before you fully flesh out your own H2 and H3 titles and the supporting text.
One valuable use of AI is to find gaps in your own ideas. An AI-guided outline can help you sketch out your ideas without missing a step. It suggests ideas for you to cover—without writing about—that you might not have considered. That step is one of the most important things you can do to help elevate your content in terms of quality and rankings.
Remember that search engines like Google reward helpful, well-rounded content. A well-crafted outline makes sure you’re answering the right questions—even when you didn’t think to ask them in your first attempt.
I liken this to keyword research for SEO work. As you pull together search terms that are related to your primary term, you cross the phrases that you expected to see. Then, there’s usually a term you hadn’t considered. It wasn’t on your radar, but it’s relevant, fits beautifully, and matches what your audience wants to know. That’s what an AI outline can help you reach.
Earlier, I mentioned how important it is for your article to have a personal point of view. So what happens when you are so firm in that view that you don’t see any downsides? Our own biases often keep us seeing more to the issue. They make you feel like you’ve answered all there is to know about an opinion or perspective.
Let AI help rid you of that idea.
I've asked ChatGPT to explain the downside of an idea.
"What do customers not like about ____ ?"
"What are the biggest complaints about _____?"
Don't take the explanations verbatim, but use those answers to see what your biases blocked out. You grow when you have empathy and understand why someone might not share your perspective. That could be anything from reviewing a tool you liked to not adopting a best practice you've been promoting for years.
The motivation isn't only altruistic. It's helpful to understand issues with your point of view simply to strengthen your argument. Like a talented sales person, knowing what you're up against can mold your presentation to address any reasons against it.
I get frustrated when I read suggestions in article that make every best practice seem so easy. Add an infographic. Include a quote from a specialist!
Infographics have become far easier to create thanks to AI, but even human-driven tools like Canva have AI elements that help novices create stunning visual elements. However my point here is more about the tougher step: include a quote from a specialist.
This is a best practice that shows depth and variety. I love that you can format a quote in most CMS systems to give it visual pop. It acts like an image to break up the text, but it also lends authority. That specialist could link to you or at least help to amplify your article. From a humanizing perspective, having a quote (a real, original quote) gives weight to your content. It can drive home a point and give the reader a relatable idea through a new, trustworthy voice.
So why don't we do it more often?
Getting a quote from a specialist--or even finding a specialist--takes legwork and brainstorming. That's where AI makes a great assistant.
I asked ChatGPT for help me with ideas about getting a quote.
The first output gave me job titles to search. That's not enough. I followed up and asked if there were specific people it could suggest, and I got a solid list of names and credentials (including a suggestion that I find them on LinkedIn). Notice that I am not replicating any quotes or dropping unvetted names into my article. But now a big chunk of my research is done, and I can take care of the human-to-human outreach.
Funny enough, I’ve also made AI clean up its own mess. Fact-checking is a must when you humanize AI content, so any steps to make it more efficient are helpful. While reading a fully AI-generated draft, I pasted a snippet into ChatGPT, asking it to help me source a claim that just didn’t pass the sniff test. The original text had even named a group that ran a study. I was able to locate more context that helped with my research.
Using data to predict and deliver better experiences is another way that AI works behind the scenes. Here's how different industries are nailing it:
The key is striking a balance between automation and personalization. While AI can handle the heavy lifting of data analysis and content generation, human oversight ensures that the personalized content remains relevant and appropriate.
Humanizing AI content is both a trust-based necessity and an SEO best practice. With respect for your audience front of mind—and some meaningful edits—you can create AI-assisted content that truly resonates.
Remember, the goal isn't to hide the fact that AI is involved in content creation. Instead, it's about getting the most out of AI's strengths so you can be more efficient. What matters most in the final result is offering creativity, clarity, and empathy that only humans can give. Good, human-driven content shouldn't stop with just being written by a person. It should be written for people.
