Polished, Pointless, and Published: The AI Copy Problem

Stop publishing perfect but pointless unedited AI comms

Everyone’s using AI. Most won’t admit it. And too many are publishing it without a single edit or second draft. That’s the real danger. The robots aren’t taking our jobs, the humans are giving up responsibility.

The result is content that’s grammatically flawless, tonally flat, and flabby – the kind that talks a lot but says nothing new. A beige fog of clichés, buzzwords, and brags, delivered with synthetic certainty and zero soul.

The output looks right, but effect is wrong.

It happened to CNET.

In 2023, they quietly published dozens of AI-generated personal finance articles – the sort of thing their readers relied on them for. They probably thought they were saving money and time. But the content was riddled with factual errors and plagiarism. Their reputation plummeted. Their editorial staff rebelled. Public trust tanked.

The problem was the lack of human editorial judgement – someone to say, “This doesn’t sound like us” or “This isn’t true or accurate” before hitting publish.

And that’s the uncomfortable truth facing every B2B brand churning out content at scale: you can use AI, sure. But if no one who understands your audience, product, and positioning is editing it, you're gambling with your credibility.

Worse, for a reader it’s irritating to get into an article, ad or email and suddenly realise it wasn’t written by a person at all. It’s an abuse of a reader’s time, an insult to their human intelligence.

Most of the AI copy I see doesn’t need tweaking.

It needs rewriting. Clients hand me drafts they say “just needs a polish.” What they usually need is a total rewrite, starting with a strategic direction, a clearly defined message, and a tone that sounds like the brand voice.

The irony is it often takes as long to ‘edit’ an AI draft as it would to write a good brief and have a skilled human do it properly from the start. Sometimes longer, because now you’re wasting time deciphering drivel.

The Anti-Pointless Checklist

(Or: how to spot content that sounds like everyone else)

• Does it start with what the customer cares about, or what you want to sell?

  If it leads with your solution, not their problem, it’s brand-first waffle.

  
  

• Can your sales team defend every claim in the copy?

  If not, it’s just hope in Helvetica.

  
  

• Does every sentence do one job well?

  Or are you asking the reader to remember three things at once?

  
  

• Does it sound like something your team would actually say?

  If not, it’s not your tone — it’s just “tone adjacent.”

  
  

• Does it say anything new — or just remix what everyone else is already saying?

  If it could be on any competitor’s site, it shouldn’t be on yours.

  
  

AI can help, but don’t use it to write the copy. Use it to write the brief. Then hand that brief to someone who knows how to turn strategy, brand voice and buyer insight into worthwhile comms that respect your audience.