Have you noticed that all of a sudden, many blogs seem to be written by the same person? That everyone suddenly started using the em-dash and writing in the same polished yet conversational way? This is the voice of AI, and yes, it’s everywhere.
Using AI to assist in your writing process isn’t a bad thing. But what we’ve noticed is that while it can be a very helpful assistant and brainstorming companion, it’s terrible at creating content that actually feels human.
Generating Slop
When I hand AI the keys, this is what happens. I tell it what I want it to write about and even feed it some past blog posts to mimic, and it spits out an article of perfect length, hitting every topic I’ve asked it to. It reads with impeccable polish and an easy conversational tone, but something’s missing.
This is the problem with a lot of AI-written copy right now. It initially feels impressive because it’s optimized for the superficial markers of good writing: smooth flow, clean structure, familiar hooks, and conversational cadence. Reading it is easy and it creates the immediate feeling of professionalism. But it’s unspecific, general, and cheesy. There isn’t a human experience underneath the writing. Often it’s saying a whole lot of nothing with too many words.
AI Writing and Empty Calories
AI is extremely good at producing clean, socially acceptable writing patterns that resemble the kind of content people are already used to seeing online. And because our brains tend to associate familiarity with quality, this style initially reads as authoritative and professional. But polished writing is not automatically effective writing.
When you give AI a topic and allow it to write your content for you, it typically generates an article with generic hooks, shallow observations and predictable sentence structures, with absolutely no resonant point. It just takes platitudes and makes them sound click-baity and quotable.
Good writing is not just about sounding good, it’s about having something valuable to say, and saying it in a compelling way that connects personal moments to the reader. AI doesn’t have the human experience to generate things worth saying or the perspective to make it original and compelling. It can replicate the structure of compelling writing because it has seen enormous amounts of it, but it cannot generate it on its own.
The experience of consuming AI slop is a little like eating junk food. It’s engineered to feel satisfying immediately because it’s low resistance and easy to consume. It’s designed to hit all your pleasure sensors and mimic substance but it doesn’t actually deliver it. Even after you’ve stuffed yourself full, you’re still hungry. It fills you up without nourishing you and often delivers the sensation of profundity and quality without the actual substance that makes writing true, useful, memorable, persuasive, or emotionally resonant.
A Tool, Not a Master
The problem is not AI itself. The problem is the way people are using it.
Many people use AI as a way to outsource engagement with the material. They want to prompt AI around a topic and then wait for the AI to do the thinking for them. When you let AI do the thinking, you usually end up with content that is technically clean but emotionally and functionally empty. AI is not magic, it’s a tool. And like any tool, it’s only as effective as the hand that uses it.
That’s where the human skill of copywriting still matters. When the human still controls the content, emotional truth, storytelling, editing abilities and strategic direction underneath the writing, AI becomes the powerful assistant it was designed to be. But those using it to throw something out that sounds “nice” aren’t going to be the business owners who land clients.
AI might be a good driver, but it doesn’t have a destination, so if you hand it the keys, it’ll drive smoothly but it won’t take you anywhere. A good copywriter knows what creates emotional connection and what communicates something of value to the reader. Their writing has a goal, and they use language as the way of getting there.
How to Use AI Well
What AI is good at is organizing thoughts. It’s useful for structuring rough ideas into a coherent outline, helping brainstorm angles, tighten wording, summarize research, or organize scattered thoughts into a clean first draft. It’s useful for reducing the mechanical labor of writing so that you can spend more time thinking strategically and creatively.
The human should still be doing the heavy intellectual lifting of sharing your personal experiences and opinions. AI should just be helping you brainstorm and organize.
Right now, a lot of businesses are using AI to produce more content faster. This may look impressive on the surface, but underneath, there’s little substance and long-term, people remember the writing that communicated substance. Be that writer. Be the business that sends newsletters that people forward to their friends because they actually say something real.
The business owners who are going to stand out over the next few years are probably not going to be those who generate the most content. They’ll be the ones who use writing to articulate their unique experience and point of view in a way that is valuable for their audience. AI can’t do that. But it can polish your thoughts and remove some friction along the way.
Need Help Writing?
At Alliance Ghostwriting we help rebellious leaders establish authority and build their audience with high quality ghostwriting and copywriting. Do you want to write a book or recurring blog? We’ve got you covered.
You break the mold, we’ll handle the writing. Contact us to learn more!
