There’s a weird phenomenon happening online right now.
Different creators. Different industries. Different personalities.
But their writing feels like it came from the same invisible template. You read a post, you nod along, you move on, and five minutes later, you couldn’t quote a single sentence. It’s not offensive. It’s not wrong. It’s not even “bad.”
It’s just forgettable.
And that forgettability is the silent cost of letting AI do the talking for you.
This isn’t a rant about avoiding AI. Not at all. AI is too powerful, too efficient, and too good at helping you think. But if you don’t understand how it actually behaves, the writing you produce with it will slowly stop sounding like you, until your audience can’t tell you apart from any other creator using the same tools.
Let’s fix that.
Why AI Writing Feels Off
People keep searching for surface-level markers: cliché phrases, certain adjectives, too many transitions, a specific sentence pattern. But those aren’t the core problem.
The real issue is that AI removes the texture of human writing.
Humans write with:
uneven pacing
unexpected emotion
oddly specific details
sudden jumps in thought
friction, hesitation, contradiction
personal bias
rhythm that changes based on mood
AI, unless you fight it, tries to smooth everything out. It wants your writing to feel cohesive and balanced, even when what you said didn’t naturally lean that way. It removes the quirks that make your personality visible.
It’s not trying to sabotage you. It’s doing exactly what it was trained to do: average out language.
But that “averaging out” is the death of voice.
And this leads to the biggest giveaway of AI writing.
The Real AI Tell: It Avoids Risk
AI never risks expressing something too sharp, too emotional, too personal, too weird, too specific, or too niche.
Humans show themselves through risk:
We say things that reveal our perspective. We express irritation. We get excited about small things. We contradict ourselves mid-thought. We point to real experiences instead of universal abstractions. We commit to opinions even if they’re imperfect.
AI avoids all of that because risk creates variance, and variance is unpredictable.
That predictability is the real AI smell, not em dashes, not tone, not formatting.
So if you want AI to write in a way that feels human and unmistakably yours, you need to force the model to keep your edges instead of filing them off.
To do that, let’s look at the subtle patterns that give AI away.
The Patterns That Make Writing Feel AI-Generated
These aren’t surface-level examples. They’re behaviors baked into the way models think.
The pacing is too even
Every paragraph looks like the previous one.
Humans naturally shift tempo.
Transitions are too smooth
You get perfect connectors everywhere: “Furthermore,” “Additionally,” “That said,” “However.”
Humans jump (unless we’re writing academic articles, I know that from experience).
Explanations widen instead of sharpen
AI restates your ideas, but more generally.
Humans explain the part that matters specifically to them.
Emotional neutrality
AI rarely expresses frustration, excitement, or irritation.
Humans do it constantly.
Vague examples
AI describes “a recent project,” “a situation,” “someone who…”
Humans refer to the exact moment something happened.
Balanced opinions
AI tries not to upset anyone.
Humans usually choose a side.
Once you start noticing these patterns, you’ll see why your AI-assisted writing doesn’t quite feel like you, even if the content is correct.
The good news?
You can fix all of this with one single unified prompt.
A prompt that pins the model to your voice, restricts its worst tendencies, and forces it to keep your human texture.
Here is that prompt.
Why This Prompt Works
This prompt works because it forces the model to:
honor your voice instead of its training distribution
use your ideas instead of generating its own
eliminate behaviors that make AI obvious
preserve the irregularities that make humans readable
inject risk, specificity, and emotion
roughen the final output instead of over-polishing it
It creates one worldview that the model must obey for the entire conversation.
No drift. No extra instructions. No fighting the assistant persona. Just consistent, human-feeling writing that still lets you move quickly.
The Real Goal Isn’t Perfect Writing, It’s Recognizable Writing
The best writing isn’t flawless.
It’s unmistakably yours.
Your readers don’t come back because you sound correct. They come back because you sound like a person with perspective, emotion, and lived experience.
AI can help you think and move faster, but only if you stay in control of the edges that make people care.
Use AI as a collaborator, not a copy-paste machine.
Teach it your voice.
Give it your constraints.
Protect the parts of your writing that make people remember you.
Your audience will feel the difference immediately.
