Are You Using AI to Write? This is What Makes it Obvious…
And this is how to adapt it to make it ultimately undetectable.
Let’s be real!
We all use some form of AI for our writing.
Yes, I know, I know! Since it’s not allowed on sites like Medium, you can’t really say it out loud.
But, just between us, we both know the truth.
I use it for my titles. I know some writers make outlines. Others generate ideas. And still others use it for research.
Yet, some still make the mistake to copy and paste directly.
If you do that, this is how you can avoid being caught.
There’s one thing that makes it obvious…
Storytelling.
Personal storytelling to be exact.
One that’s filled with personal experience — yours or someone else’s, emotional, insightful, and intimately personal storytelling!
That’s what’s missing!
It’s the conversation you lead with your closest —
your best friends
your partner
your family members
your kids
your dog (yeah, why not — I talk to my dog a lot).
What are the symptoms that reveal it?
Storytelling is personal.
It’s conversational.
There’s a person in a situation, then there’s something happening to them…you know how it goes from there.
Good writing is about speaking from your personal experience.
AI is struggling with that, even if you train it.
Look, I use it.
Yes, you have it: the unplugged truth.
My full disclosure: yes, I use ChatGPT for my writing on Medium.
Right now it’s reeeeeeeally rare.
Only when I’m kinda stuck.
When I have an idea and a few bullets I want to craft the rest of it - the meat on the bone. You know, the examples, the depictions, the spicy words, and all that…
I made a GPT (more about how to do that coming soon), and trained to write in my own style, then (and only then!) I can ask it to craft a story out of my bullets.
Next I do that:
edit heavily - my words, my phrases, my floppiness, my human typos
infuse with personal storytelling - my experience, my results, my research.
check with GPTZero to make sure it gives a good result
I literally take the ideas of the AI and transform them into my own story.
Read that again.
My. own. story.
So it’s basically not AI-generated. It’s stolen from the AI.
Yes, you could maybe say that.
So if you use AI, do just that: steal its ideas! Not it’s writing.
Because if you do, it will show.
Believe me, it will.
Medium already started to revoke enrollment in the MPP for some writers. Some are permanent.
No reinstatements.
Final.
I’d be careful…even one paragraph can be a big red flag on your profile.
Yes, they said that!
These are the three major symptoms of it - if you have them, remove immediately:
a phrase that drives me nuts when I read it: “By [doing this and that] you achieve [this and that]” It’s so AI!
big chunks of paragraphs saying nothing meaningful, just generally discussing the subject.
listicles describing ways how to do something, again very general with nothing juicy in it.
Especially when there’s none of these:
your real-life examples
your experiences
your expertise
your insights
it’s 100% obvious it’s AI-generated.
That’s it!
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P.S. This is my real voice, cloned with ElevenLabs and tweaked to sound a bit better on the microphone (I hate how I can't make it sound like a pro, even though I have years of experience in public speaking).
I use ElevenLabs to make my voiceovers so that I don't have to do the tedious work of reading and recording.
I'm a writer you know!