Guide

How to Make AI Writing Sound Human

March 2026 · 6 min read

AI writing tools are useful for getting a first draft down fast. The problem is that first draft almost always sounds like a first draft written by a machine — technically correct, well organised, and completely devoid of personality.

Here's how to fix it efficiently without rewriting everything from scratch.

Step 1: Delete the AI throat-clearing

AI models habitually open paragraphs and sections with filler that adds no meaning. Delete these on sight:

• It is important to note that…
• It is worth mentioning that…
• In today's rapidly evolving landscape…
• In conclusion, it is clear that…
• This is a complex issue with many nuances…

Just start the sentence with the actual point.

Step 2: Break the sentence rhythm

Read your text and count the sentence lengths. If they're all between 15 and 25 words, you have an AI rhythm problem. Fix it by deliberately introducing variety:

• Find two adjacent medium sentences and merge them into one long one
• Find your longest sentence and cut it in half
• Add one very short sentence — three to five words — to each paragraph

Step 3: Add contractions

This is the single fastest edit you can make. Do a find-and-replace pass:

• do not → don't
• it is → it's
• they are → they're
• will not → won't
• cannot → can't

Formal writing (legal documents, academic papers) can stay expanded. Everything else should use contractions the way a human would naturally speak.

Step 4: Replace the AI vocabulary

Swap out words that statistically flag as AI-generated:

• delve into → explore, look at, examine
• tapestry → mix, combination, range
• nuanced → complicated, subtle, layered
• pivotal → key, critical, turning-point
• furthermore → also, and, on top of that
• moreover → what's more, beyond that

Step 5: Add one specific detail per paragraph

This is what separates edited AI text from genuinely human writing. AI generates plausible generalities. Humans write from experience and add specifics — a number, a name, a date, an example from their own life or research.

Step 6: State an actual opinion

AI hedges. It presents "various perspectives" and "different viewpoints" without committing. Humans have opinions. Find one place in your text where you can say plainly what you think — not "some argue that" but "I think", or "the evidence clearly points to", or "this doesn't hold up".

Check your work

After editing, run it through a detector to see if the AI signals have dropped. You're looking for the flagged passages to clear and the score to fall below 40%.