How to NOT be an AI Detective Anymore

Be honest: how many “AI Tells” have you gathered so far? How many can you spot?

Ever since generative AI launched, the entire professional landscape has been stuck in a looping conversation. We swing wildly between optimism, anxiety, and collective disappointment at the loss of quality. But through it all, there has only been one underlying obsession: playing detective and trying to sniff out whether a piece of content is written by a machine. I think it’s time to stop. With entire industries mandating AI integration into daily workflows, the griping is pointless anyway. You are going to encounter AI-assisted content.

Besides, every time we burn our limited energy trying to decode whether an article is AI-assisted, we miss the actual message entirely. It is the digital equivalent of refusing to read a critical message just because you don’t like the color of the envelope.

I understand the frustration of reading generic, hollow text rife with obvious tells. But we need to move away from dusting for AI fingerprints and start looking for the Human Intent that was supposed to be steering the machine.

A piece of content feels empty when the person behind it abdicated their responsibility to have a distinct point of view.

If a piece of content feels empty, it’s not because an AI generated the words—it’s because the person behind it abdicated their responsibility to have a distinct point of view. Using AI to help you write isn’t lazy. But here is the reality: it takes practice to write well, and it takes even more practice to write well when collaborating with a machine.

Engagement is the new accountability. You cannot connect with an audience using an unvetted echo-chamber output. You have to actively train yourself to inject yourself into the loop.

How do you find your voice when working with a machine? Here’s my tried-and-tested 3-Step AI Detective Deaddiction Program:

Step 1. Listen to Your Own Rhythm
Authenticity requires self-awareness. Every individual (and brand) has a completely unique way of connecting with others, but you have to know what your natural voice sounds like before you open a prompt box. If you don’t understand your own internal rhythm and philosophy first, you cannot hope to recognize it—or protect it—in an AI draft.

Step 2. Own the Core Thesis
A tool can organize your data, help you find patterns, but it cannot invent your lived experience. Your unique perspective—your professional history and your specific philosophy—is the only thing that binds the patterns to create true resonance.

Step 3. Audit for Vibe
We’ve heard it once if we’ve heard it a thousand times—treat the AI draft as raw material, not the final product. Sentences don’t need to be textbook-perfect; they just need to be vehicles for your ideas. Remember that even if AI is trained on human language, it is built on predictability. Which is why first drafts feel super smooth, even if you have prompted for anecdotes and colloquialisms. Whereas human speech is built on sudden shifts, specific idioms, tangential thought, and non-linear logic.

You need to shift from passive editing to intentional Information Design or the machine will dilute your brand.

Writing in the age of algorithmic filters requires a shift from passive editing to intentional Information Design. You manage the machine, or the machine dilutes your brand.

The 60-Second Pre-Flight Coffee Pause
Before you hit publish on any AI-assisted draft, read the first paragraph out loud. If you run out of breath because the sentence structure is too uniform, or if you hit an industry buzzword you’ve never used in real life, stop. In other words, if a draft doesn’t sound like something you would say to a colleague over coffee, delete it…or better yet, rework it to make it sound like something that you would.

If you or your team is struggling to maintain a distinct, high-authority voice while integrating these tools into your communication workflows, let’s look at your frameworks. Rethink the challenge. Rewrite the narrative.