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This Week in AI — 🖊️ How to make your copy stand out as AI writes more of the internet
AI | Content Marketing

This Week in AI — 🖊️ How to make your copy stand out as AI writes more of the internet

October 14, 2025 | By: Dave Isaac

Each week we’ll gather headlines and tips to keep you current with how generative AI affects PR and the world at large. If you have ideas on how to improve the newsletter, let us know!

What You Should Know

 

How to Make Your Communications Stand Out Among AI-Generated Content

AI-generated content now accounts for just over half of new web writing, Axios reports. That finding comes from a study of articles and listicles, but we’ve all seen AI content popping up everywhere – reports, social media (looking at you, LinkedIn comments), and of course, Meta’s new “Vibes” feed and OpenAI’s Sora app that quickly topped the chart of Apple’s App Store.

AI models are becoming more and more intelligent, and can be incredible partners for developing ideas, stress-testing concepts, and yes, drafting content – if done right. 

While nearly everyone is now using AI, not everyone is using it effectively. Many outputs look and sound like AI, which can signal a lack of care or quality control, or they’re generic and blend in with what everyone else is saying. This is where communicators need to step up as the standard bearers for quality and not let “good enough” become the bar.

AI copy often looks publishable at first glance. It’s grammatically clean. It follows structure. It hits the word count (sometimes). But those characteristics are not the same as quality, and audiences can tell. That’s why, according to Project Aeon, 76% of top-performing marketers prioritize quality over quantity in their content strategies. 

Quality has always been hard to articulate, but here are four opportunities right now to signal quality in your content and communications: 

1. A strong, unique voice. Raw AI writing is indistinctive. You can make it your own by adding a dose of personality, unique diction, and the voice that is unmistakably your executives or your brand. Unique voices stand out and are the ones that media love to quote. 

2. Strong, unique opinions. This is another area where AI tends to hedge or revert to the mean. Your well-considered, strong opinions should guide any quotes or content AI is creating for you. Even a quick voice memo as input can make AI writing more distinct. 

3. Original research. Report on your industry like the media, using surveys, internal data, or other sources to tell a story that counters prevailing opinions, uncovers the root causes of a trend, or reveals interesting patterns. In short, produce something AI can’t on its own.   

4. Examples and experience. Tell stories. Share your wins and losses. Quote customers, colleagues, and other experts. These elements are almost always missing in basic AI outputs, but are strong trust signals that can make a concept or data point more memorable.  

Again, none of this means you shouldn’t use AI. You absolutely should. But you also need to think like an editor – or work with one. Fix the tone. Check the logic. Cut the clutter. Rewrite the obvious AI tells or anything that sounds vague. Human perspective is the difference in whether content resonates or is quickly forgotten.

This also isn’t a new problem. Companies have been publishing generic content for decades, long before AI allowed them to do it at scale. But now that everyone is using the same tools, it’s that much more important to stand out.

The fear that AI will replace communicators has always been overblown. There’s never been a greater need for that perspective. To ensure a consistent voice, to connect with audiences, to surface on AI search or social media, to build a brand that breaks through the noise and gets seen and remembered by customers. 

Elsewhere …

🎨 A custom ChatGPT experience 

What’s happening: Earlier this month, OpenAI updated ChatGPT’s settings to add parental controls, making it a good time to review everything in the menu and customize your experience. 

Start here: While you can change the accent color and theme in the “general” tab, it’s the “personalization” section that really makes ChatGPT unique to you. 

First off, you need to have “enable customization” toggled on. Then you can choose from five options for personality and fill in the custom instructions field for further customization (be aware there’s a 1,500-character limit). Tell it the words you want to avoid, how you want responses to be formatted, and other preferences.

This tab is also where you can access ChatGPT’s memory, which is similar to custom instructions, but more detailed and without a character limit. Take a look at what ChatGPT remembers about you and make sure it’s all relevant.

Also check: The “connectors” tab is important for data privacy. OpenAI recently added Google Contacts and Slack as connectors, but beware that enabling these means you’re granting access to the data within those tools. Check with your organization’s AI policy to see which platforms are appropriate to connect to ChatGPT.

Quote of the Week

“AI is transforming holiday shopping into a race for speed and simplicity.

“We want commerce to be secure, simple, seamless, trustworthy, and fast. We think we’ll just see a lot more commerce happening as a result.”

— Dave Anderson, VP of Product Marketing at Contentsquare, to Axios in a story on Visa’s new “Trusted Agent Protocol” for AI shopping agents

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