You can usually tell. Not from anything technical — from the rhythm. AI prose has a particular evenness, a fondness for certain words, and a habit of summarising what it just said.
Here is what gives it away and how to strip it out.
The words that give it away
These are not banned words. They are words AI reaches for far more often than people do, so a cluster of them reads as machine-written:
- delve, leverage, landscape, realm, tapestry
- navigate (used figuratively), foster, robust, seamless
- “It’s important to note that”, “In today’s fast-paced world”
- “Let’s dive in”, “game-changer”, “unlock the power of”
Search your draft for these. Most can simply be deleted rather than replaced.
The structures that give it away
The rule of three, forever
AI loves triples. Three adjectives, three bullet points, three examples — regardless of whether there are three things worth saying. Real writing has twos and fives and ones.
The restated conclusion
“In conclusion, as we have explored…” followed by a summary of the piece you just read. Cut it. If the article needed a summary, it was too long.
Every paragraph the same length
This is the biggest tell and the easiest to fix. Human writing has one-line paragraphs.
Like that one.
Balanced hedging on everything
“While there are benefits, there are also drawbacks to consider.” This sentence contains no information. AI produces it constantly because it is trained to be balanced. Take a position instead.
The editing pass
Do these in order. It takes about ten minutes on a 1,000-word draft.
- Delete the introduction. AI intros restate the title and promise what is coming. Your real first sentence is usually the third one.
- Delete the conclusion. Same reason.
- Search the word list above. Remove or replace.
- Break up the rhythm. Find three consecutive paragraphs of similar length and make one of them a single sentence.
- Add one specific thing. A number, a name, a date, something that happened to you. AI cannot invent your specifics, and one real detail does more for credibility than a page of general claims.
- Read it aloud. You will hear what you cannot see.
Better: change how you generate
Editing AI output is slower than getting a better draft. Two changes at the prompt stage do most of the work:
- Give it your own writing as a style reference. Three paragraphs is enough.
- Tell it explicitly: no introduction, no conclusion, no bullet points unless the content is genuinely a list.
Use AI for structure and first drafts. Supply the specifics, the opinions and the experience yourself. That division of labour produces something worth reading, and it is honest about which part is which.
Common questions
Will Google penalise AI-assisted content?
No. Google’s stated position is that it judges quality and helpfulness, not production method. Thin, unhelpful content ranks badly whether a person or a model wrote it.
Should I disclose that I used AI?
It depends on context and any rules that apply to you. For most blogging there is no obligation. For academic or journalistic work there usually is — check the specific policy rather than guessing.
Does running it through a “humaniser” work?
It lowers detector scores and lowers writing quality at the same time. Editing with judgement beats it on both counts.
