A Guide to Make the Most of AI Suggestions Without Losing Your Writing Identity

AI-generated content seizes the internet.

We bet you have that “it’s AI!” alarm when surfing the web. More and more articles and blog posts look generic and bland. No personality. No insights. No voice. You understand they come from AI writers, and you feel something like…

Geeze…

And you have a double geeze if you’re a content writer yourself.

You’re swimming in the ocean of texts written by large language models like ChatGPT and experience that heavy heart:

On the one hand, AI is a great tool to boost your writing productivity and creativity. On the other hand, the pandemonium of artificial content assets and the need to scan yours via AI detectors to prevent AI text patterns from appearing in your drafts influence your writing style and make you lose your unique style and writing identity.

Now, you, an expert paper writer, adjust your services because of AI suggestions. It looks like a vicious circle:

• AI learns quickly and copies you, later making your words sound artificial in the eyes of editors and AI detectors (though it steals them itself!).
• The more you read and check AI-generated texts, the more lexical items and sentence constructions from them you start using in your writing, losing your authorial voice in the process.

More than that, some AI tools exist to make AI texts look “less AI.” So, here we go: AI writes, AI checks those writings to detect AI patterns, and another AI edits them to sound less AI.

Wow! A writer’s worst nightmare has become a reality.

Good news:

You can still collaborate with AI without losing your unique style and writing identity. Turn it in your personal assistant, set boundaries, and rip its attempts to make you sound robotic and soulless.

Here’s how.

Use AI for Ideation, Not Creation

Mistake: You allow AI to write a rough draft and rewrite its output afterward. Wrong. This strips away your writing voice.

What to do instead:

Ask AI to generate ideas for your future content asset or help you with research. Prompt it to find relevant and up-to-date information, data, interesting concepts, or case studies related to your topic.

Resist the temptation to use AI for actual writing. You may think it will save you time as you can quickly revise that generic and robotic output, but it’s a trap:

You’ll proofread it and change some lexical items and grammar constructions so that it doesn’t look “less AI,” but the writing voice and style will remain artificial.

Use AI outputs as thought-starters, and craft your draft from scratch. Follow your voice. Give your work a human touch.

Set Boundaries

Mistake: You let AI take over your role, delegating ALL parts of the writing process to it.

What to do instead:

Divide the labor. Identify tasks you want to keep human-led, as they require creativity and context AI doesn’t have or understand. Leave AI with technical or low-effort repetitive tasks: data gathering, structure suggestions, typos editing, initial outlining, etc.

Keep control over the elements showcasing your writing identity:

• Narrative voice and tone
• Personal perspectives
• Stylistic devices you use to make your writing yours
• Opinions, insights
• Formatting or punctuation gimmicks (if any) you intentionally use to highlight your writing identity

Fact-Check and Evaluate AI’s Information

Mistake: You take AI outputs for granted because… well, it scans massive databases and articulates the results with high confidence. What could go wrong, right? Surprise-surprise, AI can present false information as if it’s true, spread biased nonsense, and generate made-up “facts.”

What to do instead:

Don’t allow AI to dust off your expertise and reputation. Lazy to fact-check and critically evaluate its output, you make your works artificial: generic, superficial, and vanilla. So whether you address AI for ideation, research, or outlining, never take its information for granted.

AI outputs are for consideration, not blind acceptance.

Fact-check AI:

• Search for its data points across reputable sources.
• Consult subject matter experts to validate AI’s claims.
• Apply your logic and reasoning. (Critical thinking is what AI misses: It generates convincing imitations of human writing but doesn’t understand the context.)

Ignore AI’s Unique Writing Style

Mistake: You read dozens of AI-generated texts online and start seeing their patterns like those acceptable to use in your texts. As a result, your writing loses voice. It turns into a bunch of gerunds, a black hole of “innovative,” “exceptional,” and “proven” statements that play “crucial” and “pivotal” roles in “effectively conveying” the information “in the pursuit” of matching today’s “ever-evolving” digital “landscape.”

What to do instead:

Revisit your old writing samples from time to time (those you wrote before you started collaborating with AI tools). How did you write? What was your core voice? Try to reconnect with it and remind yourself of the gimmicks that made your content unique.

When writing, inject your content with storytelling, personal narrative, and emotional writing tactics. Ai can’t replicate it:

• It doesn’t have stories to tell.
• It doesn’t have original insights and perspectives to share.
• It can’t communicate the human experiences, visions, and creative sparks that resonate with your audience when they read your texts.

Or, you can teach AI your writing style.

Feed it with several samples of your previous work (blog posts, essays, articles, whatever you have) and ask to analyze their linguistic style and tone. It will learn to recognize your writing identity, comprehend your vocabulary, and grasp your preferred sentence structures.

Thus, you’ll get more personalized AI suggestions for your future work.

Embrace Your Human Strengths in the Age of AI Content

Overdosed with AI-generated texts, we praise human creativity and innovation more than ever. So, don’t let AI steal your writing identity:

It’s your assistant, not your replacement.

Balance its efficiency with your authenticity and expertise — and you’ll be unstoppable. Writing in a tech-enhanced world is an exciting journey for those who love words and know how to make their words work.