How to Humanize AI-Generated Marketing Content

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the way we create and consume content.

While most people equate generative AI with ChatGPT, it can create everything from text to images, and even music. Exciting as that may be, using generative AI without human intervention could lead to unintended consequences and some anxiety.

To explore this concern, let’s examine how to ensure the output from generative AI is more human-like.

What is AI content?

AI-generated content, commonly known as AI content, is any written, visual, or auditory material created by artificial intelligence algorithms. AI models like ChatGPT draw from a vast database of existing writing and utilize natural language processing technology to generate text.

Using AI content can save you time, but AI tools can’t always produce accurate and human-sounding text.

Why humanize AI content?

Improve tone
Maintain brand voice
Evade AI detection
Cater to SEO
It’s worth humanizing AI content for these four reasons:

Improve tone

If you’ve ever read something that sounds a bit “off” but you can’t quite put your finger on why, you might have just read a piece of AI-generated content. The tone of AI-written content often lacks the human touch we expect as readers.

AI writing tools might provide good first drafts, but you’ll want to diligently proofread and edit to ensure that the content has the tone of human writing.

Maintain brand voice

A solid brand voice can set you apart from your competitors, but AI writing might struggle to replicate the brand voice you’ve developed for your company. For this reason, make sure to edit AI content so it matches the voice you and your customers have come to expect.

Evade AI detection

As businesses integrate AI into their content, consumers are becoming aware of the generic, bland traits that mark AI-generated material.

Customers are less likely to feel engaged with a text they suspect was written by AI, and some customers might think a brand using AI-generated text is impersonal. By humanizing your AI content, you can bypass AI detectors—both human and algorithmic ones.

Cater to SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is integral to ensuring your website or e-commerce shop is easy to find in online search results.

Search engines like Google do not necessarily penalize businesses for using AI content. Still, the algorithm that decides which web pages rank the highest in search results favors unique and engaging content. AI creates its text by examining existing writing, limiting its capacity for creating truly original content.

Why Humanizing the Output from Generative AI is Necessary?

There’s no doubt that generative AI can be beneficial. But using it without any human supervision can lead to unintended consequences, and they’re not good. Here are some reasons humanizing the output from generative AI is necessary:

1. Lack of creativity: While generative AI can string words together in different combinations, it can’t experience things in the way a human can. By itself, it may produce unoriginal and uninspiring content.
2. Bias: There’s the potential for bias in what generative AI produces. Since it learns from existing data, any bias contained in that dataset could be reflected in the output. As a result, the generated content may be considered unfair or discriminatory.
3. Inappropriate content: Likewise, a generative AI system may create violent or offensive content if trained on violent or offensive data.
4. Factual inaccuracy: generative AI has been trained to “make stuff up” and can do so very convincingly. Being a machine, it doesn’t know that this is wrong. However, those mistakes can have serious consequences. It’s even more critical when dealing with your-money-or-your-life (YMYL) topics, or when a generation has lots of statements of fact, numbers, dates, proper nouns, etc.
5. Brand Image: If content produced by an AI system is low quality, biased, inappropriate, or inaccurate, it can damage a brand’s reputation or worse.

The Role of Generative AI on Your Content Team

Generative AI can enable you to become “ignorable at scale,”. And at worst, it could cause harm. But introducing humans into the process changes the dynamics.

Here are some considerations when implementing generative AI:

1. Evaluate the training data, if possible: verify that the model uses data that is carefully curated to avoid bias and inappropriate content. If the software vendor can’t confirm this, then assume the worst. It’s not a deal-breaker, but you’ll have to be extra vigilant when editing the output.
2. Create and use guidelines: all content, whether generated in whole or in part, needs to meet specific standards. You don’t necessarily have to govern how to use the tool, but rather its output. Those guidelines typically cover aspects such as appropriateness, bias, quality, and creativity. You may already have these in place — make sure to apply them, especially to content generated by AI.
3. Re-evaluate the way you create content: don’t substitute generative AI for human writers. Instead, use it to augment their output. Generative AI may require more contributing editors, who function as part writer and part editor.
4. Refine the editing process: use an AI text classifier to check for AI-generated text, like you would a plagiarism checker. They’re not perfect, and it won’t provide you with a binary choice. But it may alert you to instances where an editor needs to be more vigilant. The old motto of “trust but verify” only applies to humans. When generative AI is involved, it’s just “verify.” Thanks to generative AI, we may see the rise of the subject matter expert editor (SMEE) to fill this gap.
5. Verify: when checking for appropriateness, look for usage of proper nouns, numbers, dates, declarative statements, and strategic insight that could be debatable or could conflict with your brand voice. Also, avoid generating content that absolutely must be correct if you don’t plan on fact-checking rigorously.

How to Humanize Generative AI Output

While content production is undergoing disruption, the need for humans remains. No surprise here, but the only way to humanize generative AI output is to include humans in the process. So, if you’re thinking ChatGPT is your content production easy button, look elsewhere.

Here are some ways to make generative AI output more human:

1. Insert humans into the loop. I’ve said it already, but it bears repeating. Humans need to be part of the decision-making process — both in writing and editing.
2. Motivate writers to contribute their expertise. Large language models can at best mimic competence. But there’s no substitute for the real thing.
3. Encourage writers to elaborate on points generated by AI, sharing a story that reflects their unique experience.
4. Make sure that every piece, where possible, establishes a clear point of view that reflects the writer’s experience. Generative AI can fake this to a certain extent, but there’s nothing like the real thing.
5. Use idioms — that’s a phrase with a figurative meaning. The AI can’t wrap its head around that one. See how I used an idiom there!?
6. Use your thoughts and feelings to bring depth to the generated output. Generative AI has no feelings. The best it can do is imitate.
7. Offer unique insight through the connection of different concepts that others may not have considered. Referring to the way generative AI works, ChatGPT can’t do this because it doesn’t “know” anything.

Conclusion

Generative AI can be remarkably advantageous. But using it without any human supervision can lead to unintended consequences. Here, we’re referring to the type that’s not good. You can avoid these issues through careful consideration of how to employ AI in the content production process responsibly.

Some content is purely functional, and the expectation level is low. Take corporate earnings reports, for example, where factual accuracy is the prime requirement.

But when the expectations are higher, pure generative AI is bound to disappoint. The only way to avoid that situation is by keeping humans in the loop.

Use AI Responsibly

AI can have a positive impact on content teams when used conscientiously. If you’re concerned about the caliber of your content but don’t know where to start, an AI-powered platform can objectively evaluate your content quality.