Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can create content, but it doesn’t always sound natural. Without the right guidance, the content can come across as dull or robotic. Fortunately, there are techniques for making AI-written text more human-like, engaging, and enjoyable to read.
This article explores ways to get more life-like, conversational content from AI. We’ll look at how to customize prompts so the system better understands the tone, emotion, and audience you want to target.
Prepare Your Prompting Environment
You’ll need an interface that lets you interact with AI and refine the content it generates. Many people are familiar with tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. This article focuses on ChatGPT, but the principles apply broadly across similar systems.
Different models may perform differently. For example, some models prioritize speed, while others excel at deeper reasoning or longer, more structured output. Choosing a model that matches your goals—whether speed, detail, or depth—helps shape the quality of generated content.
Let ChatGPT Help You Sound Less Like AI
One effective starting point is simply asking the model to help you craft prompts that lead to more natural-sounding content. Several strategies can significantly improve realism, tone, and structure.
Building a Sample Blog Post
Suppose you begin with a prompt such as:
“Please write a blog post on the benefits of solar energy instead of wind farms.”
ChatGPT can produce a basic draft, but it may be short, generic, or lacking strong structure. To improve it, you can define additional elements:
- Request clear headings and subheadings.
- Add specific details. For example, you might note that wind farms can be noisy or visually intrusive, while solar farms have no moving parts and may be easier to maintain.
- Specify a conversational but informative tone with a bit of creative flair.
- Aim for emotional impact—for instance, encouraging readers to support solar energy solutions.
- Ask for examples, analogies, or storytelling techniques.
- Define the target audience, such as the general public or clean-energy decision-makers.
- Set a target word count (e.g., 1,000–1,200 words).
Adjusting and Enriching Your Prompt
After identifying your requirements, you can rewrite the initial prompt to include all these structural and tonal details. A richer prompt — even a few hundred words long — usually helps the AI generate more natural, more human-like content.
Results From a Human-Centric Prompt
A well-structured prompt often produces more organized, human-sounding output with clearer formatting and more depth. For example, a revised prompt may generate a nearly 1,000-word post with well-defined sections and stronger arguments comparing solar and wind energy.
Iterating and Refining the Content
AI output improves through iteration. Helpful follow-up instructions might include:
- “Expand certain sections to increase the word count slightly.”
- “Make the tone more formal and fact-driven.”
- “Rewrite the post in the style of [a specific editor or columnist].”
- “Add a summary in bullet points at the top.”
Iterative refinement lets you co-edit the piece, shaping tone, clarity, and depth much as you would in collaboration with a human writer.
Alternative AI Platforms
Other AI systems can also support writing tasks:
- Claude (Anthropic): Strong at long-form writing and analysis.
- Perplexity: Useful for research-oriented queries.
- Sonar: Well-suited for coding-related tasks.
- Google’s Gemini: Capable of handling large inputs efficiently, though output quality varies by model.
Acknowledge the Limits of AI-Generated Content
AI can hallucinate or infer incorrect details. For instance, if asked to describe specifications of a brand-new product, it may substitute information from a similar known item. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) helps by pulling real-time information, but its crawlers may still surface outdated or low-quality sources.
Ambiguous prompts can also confuse AI. Clear, grounded direction is essential.
Enhancing AI-Generated Outputs
To improve results:
- Use more capable models for long-form, detailed content.
- Write prompts that specify purpose, tone, emotional goals, audience, and examples. For instance, when discussing solar energy, ask the system to contrast it with wind power’s drawbacks.
- Iterate: draft, review, refine.
- Fact-check and apply human editorial judgment.
- Use AI for various formats—blog posts, internal documents, onboarding guides, or concise summaries.
- Encourage emotional or visual resonance through anecdotes or metaphors.
- Balance clarity with creativity.
- Ask for narrative structure or example-driven explanations.
- Tailor output to the audience—decision-makers, consumers, or technical professionals.
AI is also useful for condensing or reformatting existing human-written material, making it a versatile support tool across writing workflows.