I still remember my first impression of artificial intelligence (AI).It was “SmarterChild,” a chatbot available on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Windows Live Messenger in the early 2000s that let you have a “conversation” when your real friends weren’t online.
But honestly, even as a teenager I could see the need for a lesson in humanizing AI content.
While SmarterChild could ask how I was doing and tell jokes, the exchange felt, well, robot. It was unable to learn or remember information over time and had difficulty navigating human idiosyncrasies such as slang and shorthand. It also always seemed to spout the same canned phrases as if it were the star of an ’80s sitcom.
Thankfully, much of this has improved today, but the challenges (and importance) of gaining human openness and understanding remain – especially for marketers.
Let’s find out how you can keep your human touch while reaping the benefits AI content as a marketer.
Table of contents
The rise of AI content
Accordingly Pew Research: 55% of Americans use AI at least once a day.
It’s about running our wearable fitness trackers and curating our daily mixes on Spotify. It gives us product recommendations on Amazon and sends annoying emails that we never read to the spam folder. And the effects don’t stop there.
HubSpot’s State of AI study found that 62% of business leaders say their company is investing in such technologies AI and automation tools for employees.
In fact, the number of marketers using AI in their roles has increased increased from 21% to 74% year-on-yearwith more than 74% believing that most people will be using AI in the workplace by 2030.
But why exactly?
Simply put, AI can help people in various industries Automate or speed up repetitive tasks (e.g. email automation), Increase efficiency, lower costs, Improve analysis, And be more productive overall – especially marketers.
So should you use AI content?
The short answer is yes – but I’ll say that many Asterisk. Let me explain.
As a writer and marketer, I pride myself on creating copy that converts, emails that engage, and blog articles that make readers nod their heads. But that doesn’t mean it’s quick or easy.
AI content can help speed up this process. 83% of marketers say AI helps them create significantly more content than they could without it.
What type of content do marketers generate? Checkout Top Types of AI-Generated Content in Marketing (New Data, Examples, and Tips).
A good friend, former HubSpotter and Head of Content at Ashby, Anum Hussainagrees and says: “I’m not sure I’ll ever see AI go from 0 to 100 on a content initiative, but for all of us who struggle with blank page syndrome, the rise is from 0 to 50 a huge increase in productivity.”
But that doesn’t mean you can just mindlessly copy and paste whatever HubSpot’s ChatGPT, Claude, or even Breeze offers you. It needs to be edited and “humanized.”
Why does AI content need humanization?
Our research shows this 86% of marketers Using AI requires time to process the content it produces. (And I can’t tell you how relieved it was to read that.)
Despite the operational benefits we’ve discussed, there are concerns with AI about plagiarism, bias, data security, and the possibility of government regulation. In other words, raw AI content can be very problematic because it is inherently derivative.
You see, AI content generators are based on existing content, usually collected from the internet. This is how they “learn”. Every time you type a prompt or query into a tool, the AI simply goes back to that knowledge base and selects what it thinks is most relevant to what you want.
That is, it simply compiles things that already exist. There is no guarantee that your results will be different from those provided by the tool for another user or even from those already published online.
It also certainly won’t be written with your brand’s voice or differentiators in mind, or provide the necessary expertise, experience, authority, or trustworthiness (EEAT). Google SERP Requirements of the pages it evaluates.
Smart editing or taking the time to humanize your content can address all of these concerns. So how do you do that?
How to humanize AI content
Whether you are a social media manager writing captions or a As a content manager who writes articles and website copy, learning how to humanize AI content is critical to future-proofing your content strategy. Here are seven tips on how to do it right.
To illustrate them, I asked ChatGPT to write me a blog post about how to write a great social media post.
1. Add personal stories and insights.
AI knows many things, but do you know what it doesn’t know? Your personal thoughts, insights and experiences.
If you ask it to create content for you, it may respond in a casual tone, but it’s probably just stating facts – like a textbook or an instruction manual.
However, personal stories, testimonials, or lessons can not only engage your audience with something relatable, but also add depth and originality to your content. It’s about thought leadership.
Melanie DezielContent Consultant and Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer of Creator Kitchen, enjoys sharing both personal wins and losses when editing AI content.
She shared with me: “We can take the raw materials we get from a tool like ChatGPT and incorporate not only valuable lessons we’ve learned, but also understandable mistakes we’ve made along the way. We can add context to our revelations, realizations and failures and is about sharing the emotions that surround these experiences.”
Let’s look at our example. In my example article, ChatGPT gave me the following as an introduction:
Pretty general, right?
I would humanize this AI content by including a relatable anecdote about doom scrolling when I can’t sleep or talking about a successful social media strategy I worked on to build credibility. I might also add a section on the current state of social media with my own predictions and opinions.
ChatGPT laid the foundation, but all those personal touches would give it flair. Something they can’t get anywhere else.
Pro tip: Have fun with it!
Deziel continued: “While ChatGPT’s LLM has a good handle on the prescriptive rules of grammar and syntax, we need to know when and how to break those rules to achieve the greatest impact.”
“We can include puns and sarcasm. We can make puns and include humorous asides (or…sidenotes that we think are humorous, anyway). We must intentionally manipulate sentence length with melodic mastery and break the monotony with unexpected word choices.”
“We have to be loose in our choice of punctuation, inserting ellipses to force a breath and peppering our pages with dashes to reflect the stop-and-start nature of our chaotic thought patterns…and we say things like ‘loose-goosebumps.’ .’
In short: we must do what has not been done. And an LLM inherently cannot do that. “
2. Incorporate original, visual examples.
Like personal insights, examples add substance to AI content. But you can also make the information shared easier for your audience to understand, especially if it’s educational information.
Going back to our example, ChatGPT listed this as one of their steps for creating a great social media post:
While “Use visuals to increase engagement” is pretty self-explanatory, showing real-world examples where this has been done well would really drive the point home. It would also help break up the text, making your text easier to skim and also more fun for readers to engage with.
To humanize this section, I would embed actual social media posts from brands my audience admires and explain why they were successful. I often do this in my articles:
I would also be careful not to repeat examples from competing content and be mindful of diversity and inclusion in my selections.
The idea here is to avoid the obvious and show my audience something fresh that will inspire their own social media posts.
Pro tip: Use examples from your own work whenever you can.
Consider your brand’s case studies, testimonials, or portfolio and what can support the content. These examples are unlikely to appear in similar content from your competitors, and once again help demonstrate your personal expertise on the topic.
3. Edit into first person.
Writing in the third person is a telltale sign that you have used AI.
This style can seem formal, boring, and impersonal, and can put you under Google’s EEAT regulations. To avoid all of this, try rewriting your AI content in first person – that is, using pronouns like “I,” “Me,” and “We.”
My teammate and editor-in-chief of the HubSpot website blog, Jamie Juviler, is actually turning to AI again to help him with this.
He explains: “Sometimes AI helps me give my texts a sound more human. For example, if I wrote a paragraph in the third person, I ask ChatGPT to convert it to the first person with minimal changes to the copy itself.”
This saves Juviler a lot of time, especially since he can use the same tool that originally created the content – he doesn’t have to worry about other documents or tabs.
Pro tip: Also, type your title in the first person.
Juviler continues, “I do the same thing with post titles and email subject lines—run them through ChatGPT and make the wording more consistent with my voice.” This increases the likelihood that readers will engage with the content , if the headline comes from my perspective than with a general title.”
In the case of my social media article, ChatGPT converted “How to Write a Great Social Media Post: Engage, Inspire, and Convert” into:
- “How to Write Engaging Social Media Posts That Inspire and Convert”
- “My guide to creating social media posts that engage, inspire and convert”
- “How to create social media posts that stand out, engage, and drive results”
This is also a great hack for brainstorming titles for your editorial calendar. Learn how to create your own.
4. Switch to an active voice.
In addition to the third-person perspective, AI content generators usually rely on the passive voice. And like my old friend SmarterChild, it sounds extremely robotic.
For example, in my article, ChatGPT wrote passively: “When you celebrate a milestone, show your excitement. When discussing a difficult topic, show empathy.”
This could be more dynamic and engaging if you switch to active speaking: “Express your excitement when celebrating a milestone and show empathy when discussing difficult topics.” Review your AI content for these opportunities.
5. Fact check everything.
As we discussed earlier, AI tools pull information from everywhere. Who knows if what it tells you is credible or current? In fact, they recognize this.
Why do you think most tools even come with a disclaimer like this one from ChatGPT? “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Review important information.”
Heed your warning, folks. Check everything AI writes for you.
This means both quantitative (data, statistics, etc.) and qualitative facts. Also pay attention to how old the information is. While a statistic may be true and comes from a reputable source, if it comes from a decade ago it is probably no longer relevant.
A quick search on a search engine should be enough to confirm or reject the information provided by the AI. But you can also use tools such as: B. try it out Google’s fact-checking tools or Longshot to speed up the process.
Pro tip: If you have original data or research, incorporate it. This is another example of information that no other competitor or AI will have.
6. Make your prompts more specific.
OK, so. So far all the advice I’ve given is reactive. They are things you can do after AI generated your content, but you can also take proactive measures.
I can pretty much sum them all up by saying, “Be more specific with your prompts.” But that’s not helpful, so let’s unpack things a bit.
I often compare using AI to working with a freelancer. Whenever you hire a freelance writer, you give them a creative description of what you’re looking for, right? You don’t expect them to deliver the results you want if they don’t know what you want. The same should apply to AI.
Improving your AI writing prompts – telling the tool exactly what you want to see – increases the chances that the results will match your needs and the brand message.
In our conversation, Anum Hussain brought this to the point, saying, “Ultimately, training AI tools can be similar to onboarding new employees.” By providing examples, edits, and asking for specific edits/changes, you can train the tool to so that it fits your style better over time.”
“Ultimately, it is a tool and we are the people who control it.”
Here are five important things you can do.
Give the AI a persona to take over.
If you want AI to write in first person as an expert, you have to tell them who they are. In your prompt, include who the author is, what they do, and perhaps even some of their experience.
It’s also a good idea to include details about your brand or company, such as:
- Your product/offer
- What makes it different (specific features, capabilities, etc.)
- Company mission
- Corporate values
This information helps your AI tool better understand the perspective it should take when writing.
Describe your audience.
Next, you also need to tell your tool who the target audience is. Who do you want to reach with this content? If you want, you can share a full buyer persona with your AI tool, but you’ll want to include at least the following:
- Old
- Location
- Company, job title, industry (for B2B)
- Goals
- Personal challenges
- Pain points you solve
Describe your brand voice.
How should content AI generate sound? Should it be friendly? Relevant? Funny? Specify it in detail in your prompt so that the tool can respond accordingly.
Read: How to Create a Content Style Guide (+ Free Guide and Examples)
Add examples.
Better than just telling the AI what you like, show it to them. Do you have a particular piece of content that you really admire or would like to emulate? Maybe there’s a piece that worked well and you’d like to recreate its magic.
Share them in your command prompt. Add links to your prompt or upload files for inspiration. Hussain is a fan of this feature available on ChatGPT Plus.
She shares: “Relying on an AI tool to recognize your voice without resorting to intelligence but the internet is likely to result in a tone that doesn’t suit you or your brand. “When I start a new command prompt, I upload documents of previous work I have written.”
“That way it can model the format, structure and tone that I want. There is still editorial work to be done, but it helps us get much closer to what we are looking for.”
Share terms and expressions that should be excluded.
It makes sense to tell your tool what you want, but explaining what you don’t want makes the parameters even clearer. If you want to avoid certain phrases or topics (such as a competitor’s name), indicate this in your prompt.
No information is too much when it comes to your AI prompt. While it may take longer to prepare these details before they go into production, it is much more likely to save you time in editing.
Pro tip: If you are a HubSpot user, use breeze can save a lot of the work associated with the prompt.
While Breeze’s true purpose isn’t to create “human-like” content, we built it with a specific marketing and sales context in mind that does this better.
Our team has focused on prompt engineering so that when generating content, the tool knows how to provide more details from your portal about the customer, company, or specific use case, even if you don’t specify it in your prompt.
This applies to blog articles, emails, social media posts, website copy, and even SMS text messages.
7. Use an AI tool to humanize.
OK, I know. This is a lot of manual effort. If you don’t have the resources, there are some AI tools dedicated to humanizing content that will do these tasks for you.
In the next section I will introduce four of the best.
Free tools to humanize AI content
Note: These AI tools are not used to generate new content, but specifically to improve the content.
If you are looking for tools to create content from scratch, check out our article: AI Content Generators: I tested 5 of the best; Here’s what I found.
1. Ahrefs
According to Ahrefs, its AI text humanizer is based on a language model that learns communication patterns, grammar and vocabulary from input text data.
These insights are then used to generate human-like text based on your input, producing one, three or five variants at a time. I tried it with my article from ChatGPT and here is what I found.
The good:
- The changes weren’t dramatic, which makes sense since the original article had a fairly light tone, but the The changes made were effective. For example, “Start by understanding who your followers are and what matters to them” has been changed to “Start by understanding who your followers are and what is important to them.” It’s a small but clarifying change .
The Bad:
- I was only able to enter about half of the content, which means there is one undisclosed word or character limit.
- The formatting is removed Therefore, when you enter text, you must reformat it before using it.
- The tool recognizes AI-generated content. At the top of my results I was shown a note that read: “80% of your text is probably AI generated.” This seems unnecessary because why would you “humanize” your content if it wasn’t written by AI?
Overall, it’s a helpful, easy-to-use free tool, but its user experience could be better. With the undisclosed word limit, it is also most useful for shorter content needs such as website copy, social media posts, or specific passages.
2. Writesonic
The free AI text humanizer from Writesonic works similarly to Ahrefs, simply copying and pasting your text and clicking a button to get results – but with some nice little extras.
The good:
- After I entered my text, I was able to Choose from 14 different vocal tones (i.e. engaging, persuasive, friendly, etc.). This option makes the tool even more useful for many purposes Content marketing purposes. Not every tone fits every campaign or medium, and being able to specify what you need will definitely make you feel more confident about the results.
- I could do it too Choose from 24 languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish and Hindi.
- There is one Limit to 200 words, and it showed me how many over or under I was. The tool wouldn’t run if I didn’t go below this limit. The word count transparency was great to see and doesn’t leave you wondering if you did something wrong like Ahrefs.
The Bad:
- I tried two different tones: simplified and luxurious. At first I was pretty impressed. The simplified version definitely removed more formal language and replaced it with more universal alternatives (e.g. replacing “audience” with “followers”). However, when I switched to “luxury” it became The results remained largely unchanged.
- Writesonic retained more formatting on input than Ahrefs, but that was all REMOVED after processing. This makes it difficult to skim and evaluate the results.
- There were some grammatical problems (i.e. missing commas) in the results.
In terms of UX, Writesonic’s AI text humanizer is an evolution of Ahrefs. I appreciate their transparency regarding the word limit and the results are decent, but the customization options seem more for show at the moment.
After my third generation of testing, I was also confronted with a form. You have to Sign in to continue using the tool for free.
3. Surfers
Next I tried it Surfer’s free humanizer for AI contentwhich is currently in beta phase.
The good:
- Of the options I tried, Surfer has the highest word limit at 500 – but that appears to be a lifetime limit. Like Writesonic, Surfer is transparent about the limit, so I wasn’t left in the dark.
- It maintains text formatting throughout the humanization process – a huge win! This includes header and paragraph tags.
The Bad:
- There are some grammatical problems (i.e. missing commas and inconsistent capitalization) in the results.
- No customization options for sound, language, etc.
- Like Ahrefs, the changes were minimal, with the tool noting that the copy had already been read when a human wrote it. That’s understandable, but coming to this tool I would obviously like to see further improvement. I would have liked to see the tool do more.
4. Scribbr
Scibbrs is not designed as a “humanizer” like the other tools free paraphrasing tool can be used in a crunch for these purposes.
The good:
- I could copy and paste text or upload a document to paraphrase.
- I was able to paraphrase in 26 different languages.
- The tool has two modes that I can choose from: standard and fluent.
- By toggling the “Synonyms” options you can control how much of the specific language you want to change.
- Maintains most formatting throughout the process.
- Allows you to select specific words to be “rephrased” in the results. By clicking on the highlighted word, you can then choose the alternative you like best.
- The changes are significant.
The Bad:
- This has the lowest word limit of all the words I tested, just 125 words.
- Due to the significant changes in this tool, there is a higher risk of losing focus keywords when used for content marketing.
Master the balance between AI and humanity
As we enter a future where AI becomes an even greater force in content creation and marketing, the key to success is balance.
AI offers incredible speed, efficiency and scalability, but it is the human touch – our personal voices, wins, losses and experiences – that makes content great. It is what breathes life, personality and authenticity into your message and inspires trust in your audience.
It’s the X-factor that gets them to follow you on social media, buy from you and recommend your brand.
By combining personal insights, unique examples, careful editing, and more thoughtful suggestions, we can create content that resonates with our audience while leveraging the best that technology has to offer.