Writing with AI? Three Tips to Make it Sound Like You

AI is a tool to be leveraged, but it shouldn’t replace your brain—or your voice.

It took me a while to embrace generative AI as a tool in my business. The turning point came about in early 2025, when a colleague got her first client referral from it. 

Curious, I checked it out. I was blown away by what it can do. And probably, like many, at first I overused it, gleefully running every question, challenge, or tedious task through it. 

But I soon learned its limitations:

1. No amount of training could get it to sound like me.
2. Sometimes it takes more time to get the prompt right for a task than just doing the task.
3. If I’m not careful, I can over-rely on it and not use my brain as much.

Generative AI Is a Tool

I have some friends and colleagues who still refuse to use it, and I applaud their boundary-setting. My approach, however, is this: the genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back. Just like computers, the Internet, and social media, generative AI is here to stay.

For small business owners and writers on a budget, if we don’t quickly learn to model healthy usage, we risk 1) lagging in our business while competitors embrace it, and 2) not being an example to younger generations who may, as with previous technological advances, use it in ways that are unhealthy. 

Note: “AI” means artificial intelligence in general, but for the rest of this article, I will use it to refer exclusively to ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools.

Three Tips for Healthy AI Usage in Writing

At a recent business luncheon, a colleague did a presentation on how to use AI in business. He made a comment I find worth repeating:

“Think of AI as a bright, young college intern. Eager to help, smart, and efficient—but you have to check its work.”

With that in mind, let’s look at some ways that generative AI can become part of your writing toolkit.

Research Tips

AI is disrupting conventional Internet search engines. In fact, if you’ve heard of SEO (search engine optimization) for websites and content, there’s now an updated version of that: GEO, or generative engine optimization. 

(Also called AEO for Answer Engine Optimization, AIO for AI Optimization, or simply AI SEO. Yeah, there are a lot of acronyms.)

What is GEO? It’s the optimization of websites and content for AI algorithms, just like SEO does for search engines like Google or Bing.

I’ve heard some experts warn against using AI for research. I disagree. If (and that’s a big if) you do it correctly, it can actually be incredibly helpful. It reminds me of what a college professor told me about Wikipedia. He said he encouraged his students to use it not as a source to cite, but as a place to find sources to cite.

AI works similarly.

Some AI models automatically give you their source links. Others, you have to ask. You can refine your searches or interrogate them.

For example, a few weeks ago, I asked ChatGPT for research on a topic, and it returned several articles. One article puzzled me – the author appeared to refute the point I was trying to make.

So I told ChatGPT: “This article doesn’t support X. It seems to argue the opposite.”

ChatGPT pointed out that in the article’s comments, readers noted the author’s experience was highly unusual, and the author agreed.

In other words, taken as a whole, the author supported my point. That, however, was not in the article’s body.

On the other hand, if the sources AI pulls its answers from aren’t authoritative (say, Quora or Reddit threads), you can ask for better ones. Or you can refine your search: e.g., “these articles are talking about districting changes at a statewide level; I need information on districting changes for the City of San Antonio.”

Editing

I had to learn the hard way: don’t just plug in a passage or email you’ve written and ask what’s wrong with it. It’ll rewrite the whole thing, and you’ll get lost trying to figure out where the changes are, what you want to keep, and what you want to throw out.

The first thing I do when I copy and paste in a passage I want feedback on is say: “DO NOT REWRITE.”

Then, I specify what kind of feedback I’m looking for:

• Is this accurate?
• Please check for loopholes/anything I’ve left out.
• Please check for repetitive language/inconsistencies/typos.
• How is the flow/tone?

That gets it to give me feedback the same way a human editor would. And, as with a human editor, I don’t always incorporate feedback I disagree with. If I need clarification or an example, I ask for it. 

Tone

Like me, you may have grown adept at noticing when a social media or blog post is likely AI-written.

While these aren’t guarantees that something is AI, here are a few tells:

Tone / Voice Markers Quiet Quietly How something lands Subtle shift Not… not… just… format (e.g., Not angry, not shouting. Just disappointed.) Hear me out	Buzzwords / Hype Words Hype Unlocked Unleashed Navigate Harness Explore
Stylistic Patterns / Formats The rule of three (e.g., Silent. Guarded. Stoic.) It’s not ____, it’s ____ Using em dashes in places most writers wouldn’t	Weak Writing / Filler Indicators Fluff Hand-waving Filler words (e.g., actually, really, truly, deeply) Too many adverbs (besides those listed above)

Now if, like me, you’re being paid to write, you should never use AI to straight-up write for your client unless you disclose it. However, besides writing for clients, I have a plethora of other writing tasks – emails, social media posts, and so on. For these, AI helps me craft them without creativity burnout.

That said, I still want that writing to sound like me. So I watch for things like the above that don’t sound like me. If you’re particular about voice in your branding, you should do that for your writing, too.

Another thing I notice: I like to ask my reader questions. AI almost never uses questions. So that is one way I always tweak whatever AI gives me.

You’ll have to think about your own writing and compare it to AI to know where those differences lie, but once you do, it’s easy to figure out how to make the right changes so that your content still sounds like you.

How to Move Forward

AI is here to stay. If you’re comfortable with it, you should absolutely be using it as a writing tool.

However, you need to stay vigilant to keep AI from replacing your brain and voice. The safeguards I’ve mentioned are ways to help with that.

Have thoughts? I’d love to know what you think in the comments!

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