Beware the copy and paste! As a marketer, you should make sure that your unique voice comes through in both your prompt and the final content. This looks like specific, thorough, and unique prompts that reflect your brand voice and include specific info and talking points that AI couldn't imagine up. And because no one (or nothing) can tell your story quite like you, you have to edit the output. Read it aloud: does it sound like something you would say? If not, revise until it does. When used this way, AI can speed up the writing process without stripping away your authenticity.
Adopt something called the Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) workflow. Let the model do what it's great at: deep research, audience insights, ideation, headline testing, and a clean outline. But the human editor should always review and refine the output for tone, context, brand voice, and emotional nuances. Once the human-written draft is finished, you can loop AI back in for the fact-checking or SEO schema suggestions. But again, never actually use AI to write the content. This keeps the content pipeline scalable (and fast) while ensuring that the content still carries value and authenticity. This is exactly the strategy we've implemented to increase organic impressions and help clients stay immune to Google's core updates.
I think that while AI can take on tedious, mind-numbing tasks like scheduling posts and data analytics, content creation should be left to humans. Robots can never, ever replace human ingenuity. If you use tools like ChatGPT to write copy, you'll just get a regurgitation of the same content that's been written 10,000 times before. My advice is to use ChatGPT to identify the ideas/content that have already been used, and then go an entirely different direction. This helps digital marketers to hone their creativity and think outside the box.
Before answering the question, we need to realize that AI is very useful when we see it as a quick way to understand things on which the content is required. If we had so much understanding and knowledge already, we wouldn't have to depend on AI at all. Now to answer the question, it's not really about balancing AI-content with human oversight, irrespective of the storytelling aspect, it's all about making AI-content purposeful and unique every single time. To do it, we can organize the AI content into distinguishable parts, so that we can easily understand what each AI-generated part has to convey and align it to our understanding, one part at a time. Next, considering the storytelling aspect, to achieve scalable yet authentic storytelling, we can converse with the AI tool more to understand each other and align accordingly. With an AI around, we have the advantage of having a mutual understanding, and a single prompt never helps to do it. With every unique storytelling need, we can converse with the AI tool quickly every time, just like a quickly chat with a friend, and we can get the authentic content that we envision in our mind. Final Words: We simply cannot leave it to the hands of AI for maximum scalability, we need a human oversight like mentioned in your question.
It's tricky! Actually, authenticity and scalability often pull in opposite directions. If something feels truly personal, it's usually time-consuming to create so you cannot really scale it as you would like to... And if it's scalable, it often loses its soul completely. To try and find my way around this, I came up with a strategy I call PLOT: Prompt, Layer, Own, Test. P -> Prompt with intention. Don't let AI guess your tone or structure, give it guardrails based on your brand voice. The more the merrier. L -> Layer your own insights, anecdotes, and the small context cues only a human would know. ChatGPT (or anything else) can't copy that. O -> Own the story. Don't just approve what AI spits out: shape the angle, take a stance, say something real. I love using 'contrarian' as a guideline in my prompts! T -> Test with real readers. Ask: does this resonate, or does it just sound polished? We have a special Slack channel for that, but even a coworker can help here. Some people think it's all about replacing human storytelling, but that's so wrong — for me, it's about scaling the starting point and then adding human substance where it matters most. and IMHO, you still need a human to make it matter, not just exist, and this will not change. Scalability gets you reach, consistency etc.. Human touch earns you trust, and that is something no LLM/AI can help you achieve :) Happy to answer any additional questions you might have. PLOT is really effective for me and I still fine-tune it.
Use AI for structure, research, statistics, but humans for the actual writing. For us, we balance the two by using AI tools for the research/prep side of writing, while we have a human do the actual writing. AI tools are great for this because you have so much information easily and quickly accessible to you. For example, let's say you are writing a new page from scratch. Start by looking for competitors that have similar pages, note those urls and prompt a tool like perplexity to review the content on the pages, identify what all of the pages contain and where there are gaps in the content. Perplexity is also great at finding relevant statistics you can add to your page. To take this a step further, you can also take full page screenshots of competitor pages and upload them to Claude and have it assess the designs/layouts for commonalities. Once you have a good amount of research done, you can have AI draft the frameworks — page outlines, ideas for compelling headlines, a layout that is designed to convert, relevant statistics, etc. Pass this all along to your human writer to wrap up and you will end up with a strong, comprehensive piece of content.
AI can help you research, outline, and draft, but you need a human (with good taste) to decide what to write about, what the angle should be, and so forth. Even if AI helps you write it, always take a pass to add a more human voice, infuse real-life anecdotes or examples, or share unique perspectives. (Bonus points if you can talk about a specific win or a failure you experienced and do so in a way that sounds authentic.) Pro-tip: Always read your writing out loud. If it sounds natural, it will read that way, too. That's the key to scale but maintain quality with AI.
Writing very detailed prompts that include key pieces from your brand guidelines can help marketers get more unique content that also aligns with your company's mission, vision and values. This requires thoughtful research and planning for your all AI-generated content, but ultimately results in scalable content across marketers and departments, leveraging brand guidelines to create consistency and tie everything together.
One of the best ways is to use AI for the heavy lifting, like drafting outlines or pulling research, and then have a person refine the story. That way you still get speed and scale, but the final voice, style, and details come from someone who understands the brand and audience. It keeps the content feeling real and avoids that flat, generic tone you sometimes get with AI alone.
Hello, I hope you're doing well! I'm Flynn Zaiger, CEO of Online Optimism, a twenty employee digital agency I started in 2012. I've previously been featured by Reuters and Inc.com for my expertise, and would be excited to be included in your article + happy to share it via my social media channels. A few uniquely written quotes are below exclusively for your usage, though I'm happy to answer further questions over email, phone, or video call. -- - At Online Optimism, we've found that best practice is using AI tools for first drafts or outlines, never for final drafts. We have our team use AI to generate initial content frameworks and ideas, but then our human writers step in to flesh it out with real stories, emotional nuance, and brand personality. We think of AI as laying foundations, while humans build the house that people actually want to live in. The authenticity and relatability that only humans can spot and appreciate has to come from other humans. - A balanced approach that utilizes the best of human ability and AI ability lets us scale without sacrificing the humanity that makes marketing actually work. AI excels at pattern recognition and consistency across large content volumes, while humans bring context, emotion, creativity, and cultural awareness. AI builds structures. Humans make the content unique and memorable. - Thanks for your consideration! Any questions, just reach out and I'll answer ASAP. If I'm included, please let me know so I can share from my personal social accounts and our agency's accounts. Company: Online Optimism Name: Flynn Zaiger Title: CEO Email: Flynn@onlineoptimism.com Website: https://www.onlineoptimism.com/ Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flynnzaiger/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/online-optimism/
We've experimented with fully AI-generated content for our clients—and while it's technically possible, it always loses something vital: soul. If you want to keep your storytelling authentic and engaging, there has to be human involvement at some stage. My approach is: start with your idea, bring in your experience, then let AI help you refine it—whether that's for structure, tone, or SEO. But the core should still be yours. Even if an AI bot follows every guideline, it will still feel like AI. What makes content truly resonate is your fingerprints—your thought process, your emotion, your handwriting. And if you really scroll through social media these days, you'll notice it: countless similar posts, echoing the same paraphrased ideas. Most of it is secondary material—no original thought, no real core. Just noise. Authenticity is getting harder to find. I feel like many businesses are finally circling back to the classic tension of quality vs. quantity—and I really like this tendency. It shows we're starting to value depth over repetition, originality over output.
For me, it comes down to how you train the AI. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can actually remember the way you like things said (your tone, priorities, and other little details that matter). You can prompt it with your knowledge, your brand values, even examples of your past work, and over time it starts to sound a lot like you! All that said, I still think human oversight is non-negotiable. I'll use AI to help brainstorm or draft, but I always tweak things myself to make sure the final version feels real (including the removal of all em dashes!).
Start by writing the main storyline yourself, providing as much input as possible, and then let AI focus on structure, grammar, and enhancement. It can also help to expand your ideas or find logical inconsistencies. Once you have a content piece to your liking, AI will help you scale by adjusting the content for different platforms or formats to distribute it more efficiently. Lastly, run an AI detection tool to ensure that the content still feels human and doesn't look like it was made by AI. To avoid ranking penalties, down-ranking, or having your content feel too generic and mechanical, ensure it appeals to both humans and AI.
My work at Overcode involves the integration of technological solutions, including AI, and the company's marketing strategies. In our work, we try to maintain a balance between AI-generated content and human oversight. In this case, the winning strategy is to use generative AI to create a plan or drafts, and entrust the main body of the text or check the adequacy of the generated text to a human. At our company, we use AI to draft product descriptions, blogs, email newsletters, etc. Humans are involved in the stage of adaptation and analyze the relevance of the text to the needs and values of the target audience, tone of voice, and check data with facts. If a high level of text uniqueness is important to you, you can use specialized AI detectors.
Use AI to scale what works, not to replace judgment. At EcoATM, we test AI to write ad variations fast. That speed helps, especially in paid media. But once the copy lands, people review every version. The team cuts generic lines and forces real context. AI gives volume. The team gives meaning. Strong marketers stay close to customer signals. In retail, that means tracking how users speak in reviews or feedback. In finance, it means clear, regulated language. AI won't know those filters unless you set them. We built internal guardrails for tone, product truth, and relevance. Then we layered them into prompts and review checkpoints. Balance comes from control. You can let AI write first drafts, but people own the final say. I've seen teams let machines shape the message too far. The result sounds smooth but says nothing. That's how trust erodes. Instead, let AI be the assistant. Then have your team sharpen the voice, punchline, and CTA. That's where your brand lives.
One way to balance AI content with human oversight is to use AI for the structure of your content, but keep humans in charge of the narrative and style. For example, I often use AI to generate first drafts and outlines, but a marketer always does the actual writing and shapes the voice, adds real-world context, and ensures everything aligns with our brand's tone in a way that's only possible with human oversight. This process helps to use AI effectively for its strengths, without replacing humans as storytellers. I find that AI struggles to offer genuine insights but is great at getting 90% of the way there, which makes it great for creating a foundation for content, then handing things over to a human to make it truly meaningful.
Marketers should always look over and make necessary edits to any content they generate with AI. If you don't at least look over it, you run the risk of posting content that is inaccurate, confusing, or just doesn't fit your brand voice. It's necessary to look it over for legal reasons too. For storytelling purposes, understand that genAI can't always capture your brand voice how you'd want it to, so making edits for consistency there can really help.
I suggest only using AI in the brainstorming and research phase. There is truly so much valuable information you can get from AI to help you write stronger content. For example, you can use AI tools for generating ideas, analyzing trends, finding relevant statistics, and structuring content, but save the final storytelling/writing process for a human. This method allows for efficiency and scalability while protecting creativity and authenticity in the finished product.
AI is a powerful tool, but in our field, it's only truly valuable when it works in service of real human experience. At Epiphany Wellness, we use AI to help us outline articles, brainstorm topics, and speed up some technical writing, but it never replaces the voices of the people who've lived through what our clients are facing. I'm in long-term recovery myself, and I believe the most important part of our storytelling is honesty. That kind of honesty can't be generated, it has to be felt, and it has to come from people who truly understand. Our approach is simple: AI gets us started, but humans, our staff, our clinicians, and often our alumni, finish the story. They make sure the language is respectful, the message is grounded, and the tone reflects the empathy our audience deserves. Scaling content is useful, but only if it stays connected to the mission. The second you let efficiency outweigh authenticity, especially in behavioral health, you lose what really matters: trust. That's something we refuse to compromise.
AI is a powerful tool, but it's not your brand voice. At MaidThis, we use AI to scale drafts fast - blog outlines, service page frameworks, even email templates. But every single piece goes through a human filter before publishing. We inject personal stories, local context, and language that actually sounds like us. The balance is this: let AI handle the structure, but let a human craft the soul. One trick we use? Pull real quotes from customer feedback, cleaner interviews, or franchisee chats - then wrap AI content around that. Suddenly it feels real, not robotic. If your content doesn't sound like a person your customers would trust, it's not helping your brand - no matter how fast it was written.