Is your AI-generated copy giving potential customers the ick?
Quick facts…
Many recent studies (2026) have shown that people lose trust in a brand if they suspect the copy and content is AI-generated.
This doesn’t mean you have to swear off Claude. AI is great for speeding up low stakes tasks, such as outlines, product descriptions and summaries, or reformatting old content. Where it falls down is with creative, long-form and strategic work.
A copywriter (or at least, a human) can use their experience, creative brain and critical eye alongside AI tools, to get the best results for your brand.
If you’re marketing for a brand or business, you’ve probably at least tried using AI to write stuff - whether that’s web copy, emails, blogs or social media posts. But with so much anti-AI sentiment in public discourse right now, are you confident that this AI-generated copy is doing you justice, celebrating your brand the way it deserves?
Or could you be giving your potential customers the ick?
Why it’s risky to depend on AI to produce your copy
We all see why using AI is appealing - there is an endless list of tasks and we are too overwhelmed and overworked to write at scale. With AI, copywriting tasks which would have taken hours or even days to produce can be whipped up in mere seconds.
And in terms of quality, it’s not bad. It’s not great, but good enough, isn’t it?
That’s a phrase often bandied-around about generative AI.
Good enough.
Except…
You’ll sound the same as everyone else
Here’s the thing. This convenience? It has come at a genuine cost, as now everyone is using that same AI-voice to speak to their customers. This isn’t just a trend. It’s a quiet erosion of authenticity.
Yeah so that was an impression, if you didn’t get it 😁 AI-copy, dressed up in all its giveaways - the familiar phrases, short and punchy clauses next to meandering, unnecessary details, the sycophantic tone - is absolutely everywhere you look.
We are zzzzzing over here. These times are hyper competitive, and with so many people using the same tools, it’s too easy to blend into the background with this over-polished, smarmy tone.
But that’s what makes standing out with your own vibe, real-life experience, expertise and smartly-crafted brand voice all the more valuable. Your ideal people are skimming over the AI guff, and craving realness.
Isn’t it the ideal time to give them exactly what they want?
2. It’s vague, it hallucinates, and it messes up
If you’re using AI to write long-form content such as guides, news updates or blog posts, you’ll spend a lot of time fact-checking - as it’s crazy prone to making mistakes. On a personal note, Gemini recently told me that Hugh Grant is 30 years old, and that Belle ended up with Gaston at the end of Beauty and the Beast.
There are more severe errors in the short but much-maligned history of LLM usage, for example when the Chicago Sun-Times published a summer reading list of books that didn’t exist, or the fact that the UK High Court had to call out lawyers for referencing AI-hallucinated case law.
Unless you’re willing to double check everything AI tells you, it could definitely land you in hot water if you use it for fact-heavy or research-led material.
3. People don’t like AI-generated… anything
At first, maybe it was only tech professionals who could detect AI copy, but now it’s trickled down to the masses and flooded our social media feeds, even your Mum might clock it instantly.
And due to the aforementioned reasons, as well as the environmental and economic impacts, the very real potential for our collective cognitive decline, mass job losses, and concerns around copyright theft and privacy violations… people don’t love it.
A 2026 YouGov study found 68% would be less likely to engage with creator content if they knew it was AI-generated, and 42% would trust a brand less if its content was AI-generated, against only 11% who would trust it more.
Basically if you lean hard on AI to speak on your brand’s behalf, you risk seriously eroding customer trust.
‘ What about those who don’t know it’s AI-generated? ’, I hear you interject.
Well, chances are they’re still unlikely to remember your copy much, since it probably uses that same cadence and rhythm as the Instagram post they read before yours, and the marketing email they read after it.
(Unless you’ve trained your AI copy bot to write really well in your brand voice. Even then, it tends to frequently miss the mark unless it’s been thoroughly taught, and probably needs a human edit).
So when can I use AI to produce my copy and content?
I’m not telling you to hold up a crucifix to all AI platforms and splatter holy water on your laptop screen (though, full disclosure: I’d like it if you did).
Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini and their range of bot-faced competitors are immensely useful when it comes to ticking off your to-do list at pace, and creating a slick, personalised operation behind the scenes.
When it comes to writing for your business, though, potential overuse of LLMs can really wreck your brand’s vibe and how it’s perceived, unless you have a professional copywriter on hand to wade in and restore some sanity.
If you’re super keen on using AI to write your copy, here are some final tips to getting the most from it…
Give it low stakes writing tasks
AI comes into its own when left to the bitty, repetitive copy that is easy in theory but long and tedious to produce - things like product descriptions, meta tags, FAQs, outlines of long-form pieces, or summaries of lengthy documents.
Use AI to draft, and you edit
If you have a topic and sub-topics you want to explore in a long-form piece, get Claude or Chat GPT to produce a draft, then shape it yourself.
When I’ve experimented with this I need to cut down lengthy headings, strip unnecessary sections, restructure it, and then re-word most of the text, and then fact-check it. Then I read it through and think, ‘I could have done this better from scratch.’
For me, it rarely saves more time than if I’d done it myself - but if you have a phobia of the blank page as many of us do, getting a first draft fast can certainly start you off.
Train a copy bot in your brand voice
If you have honed Tone of Voice guidelines with rules, a Style Guide, sample copy and a suggested vocab list, you could experiment with training an AI copy bot to speak like your brand. This can be a really handy bit of kit if you have your Tone of Voice all worked out; but if not, a Copywriter and/or Brand Storyteller can develop this with you.
Add your own real life experience; tell stories
Weave your AI draft with stories from real people. Obscure human details and conversational tidbits are what make content feel alive and immersive. Share something you’ve seen, heard or learnt yourself, and give people something they can connect with, beyond a paragraph of fact-heavy features. Not only is this better to read, Google and AI Search like this too, so you’ll boost your search visibility 👍
Fact-check, then check again
If there’s one thing you surely value from your customers, it’s their trust! But when AI gets stuff wrong and you leave it in there, you shoot that trust from a cannon into the abyss. Don’t take what AI says as gospel - check each claim against a reputable source, then check it again. As a brand, you’ll soon develop a reputation for accuracy, integrity, and meaning what you say.
Bring in a (fleshy, brain-owning) copywriting expert
You knew this was coming. Bring in the warm-blooded stars themselves; the all-singing, all-dancing, all-BREATHING human copywriters! They sneeze, they snort, they move each eyebrow independently🎉
Seriously though, you can’t beat in-person collaboration. There’s nothing like depending on an experienced professional to hear you, understand the nuances of your business goals, and then work their wordy, markety magic, either alongside an AI sidekick, or without.
Get in touch with me today if you’re done with the average AI spew. Let’s create copy for your brand that refuses to blend in - whether that’s your Messaging, Voice, or Stories.
