AI has been a hot topic among writers and editors this year. The list of “AI tells” started with the em dash and continues to grow.
For me, the biggest “tell” is AI slop – the low-quality, AI-produced content that lacks depth, substance, and accuracy. The term applies to all media – video, images, and words – and it’s so pervasive that The Economist named it 2025’s word of the year.
Generative AI offers the potential to streamline content creation, but the reality is that the quality falls short, even in trained models. AI content has a lot more in common with eighth grade English than professional writing, so it needs a human editor ready with a red pen before it’s released into the wild.
AI Tells in the AI Slop
We have a high bar for branded content. Our goal is to create high-quality thought leadership that both informs and motivates readers to take action. That means content must be unique, thought-provoking, and trustworthy. These standards are nonnegotiable.
We approach every draft and revision, both human- and AI-generated, with a healthy dose of skepticism, and we question every statement, fact, and word. In editing AI copy, we’ve learned that AI slop has some not so obvious tells.
Lack of substance. This is copy that sounds good on first read. It’s lyrical, uses smart words, and feels authoritative. Read a bit more closely, though, and you’ll realize it’s empty of all meaning. Inexperienced writers often make this mistake. They worry more about how the words sound rather than the point they’re trying to make.
Here’s an example: “Each morning, your team, clients, and collaborators step into a marketplace alive with fresh strategies and shifting alliances. Tuning your message so it resonates with today’s currents isn’t just smart—it’s the difference between being heard and being left behind.”
Seems like a fresh way to say: “the market is always changing and so should your messaging,” right?
That’s fine, but that’s not a new observation. It’s missing specifics. Here’s how we revised that sentence:
“Effective brand messaging reflects a deep understanding of your buyer, the competitive marketplace, and the forces and headwinds affecting it.”
Every word, sentence, and paragraph must have a purpose.
Incorrect or misleading information. Just like humans, GenAI can be wrong. It has been known to hallucinate, make things up, or provide the wrong information. Recently, I uploaded my resume and asked the AI to use it to write my bio.
In its first couple of attempts, AI had all the details correct. By the fifth version, it had me graduating from an entirely different university. Granted, just like my alma mater, this one was based in New Jersey, had five letters in the name, and began with an R.
The lesson? Even when you supply the information, you can’t skip the fact check.
All talk, no personality. This one is perhaps the most difficult to recognize. Successful thought leadership is all about sharing a unique point of view, built on deep expertise and real-life experience.
But even reading my AI-generated bio, I thought: This could be anyone. Even trained on my content, my AI version fell short. Somehow, it still missed my distinctive voice and personality. That a one-of-a-kind perspective is what makes brands stand out, and it takes work to get it there. That’s true for both human and AI writers. No matter who produces it, generic, bland content requires almost a complete overhaul.
How to Turn AI Slop Into Gripping Copy
An excellent editor can fix all of these problems. Here’s what our editors do to transform early drafts from our writers. These lessons are also applicable to AI copy that doesn’t meet thought-leadership goals.
Infuse human experience. If readers can’t relate to your content, there’s probably not enough emotion in your story. AI can’t fake human experience. If you want to motivate readers, frame the human element and make it the focus of your piece. Don’t be surprised if this step requires the heaviest revisions.
Build your case – and prove it. Less experienced writers struggle with structure and substance, so this isn’t solely an AI problem. If you want a reader to believe what you’re saying, you have to build a convincing argument. Put every word to work, make sure every sentence builds on the one before it, and ensure every paragraph is tightly focused on each piece of evidence. By the time your reader has reached the end, you should have won them over.
Facts, not fiction. Fact checking is a longstanding journalistic best practice, but it applies to any kind of communication. And it’s crucial, because getting the details wrong or making a sloppy mistake erodes trust in your brand. Whether the copy is written by a human or AI, you must verify every statement, validate every link, and question every turn of phrase.
In the age of AI, I worry most about the effect of compounding inaccurate information. If we’re not careful, we’ll repeat the same factual errors over and over and lose the ability to know what the truth is.
Everyone Needs an Editor
As I like to say: Everyone, even AI, needs an editor.
We all want and need to scale content production and be more productive, but quality still matters. Marketing is all about building trust with our buyers.
Don’t undermine it with AI slop. Set the bar high and get your red pen out.
