Why we’re not changing how we write because of AI

We’ve begun to notice something of a pattern in recent months. People aren’t just questioning whether our content has been written using AI – that would be a simple one to answer: it has its place, but not when it comes to the long-form thought leadership and insight articles that define a brand’s expertise.

Instead, we’re being asked whether we should avoid or reduce certain punctuation marks and writing techniques because they’ve become so associated with AI-generated copy. While it’s an understandable and fair question, for us, it opens up a much bigger conversation about originality and what ‘great writing’ should look like in the age of AI.

Here, we explore why the hallmarks of skilled writing are increasingly being mistaken for AI, and highlight why compromising your brand’s voice in response is a risk not worth taking. 

AI learns from great writers

The irony isn’t lost on us that many of the overused traits now so flippantly labelled as ‘AI’ are simply the hallmarks of good writing. This is writing that’s purposeful, emotionally intelligent, and is so very carefully crafted to guide the reader through an idea. To give examples, we’re talking the ‘rule of three’, short and punchy sentence structures, and considered punctuation, to name a few – these aren’t tricks or techniques invented by ChatGPT. 

Oxford commas, stop-start sentences mingled with the long and rhythmic comparative structures… These devices have been in skilled writers’ toolkits for centuries, employed to ensure copy builds momentum, taps into emotions, and resonates in the way it’s intended. AI didn’t create them – it learned them from human writers. And as tools become more sophisticated, they will only become better at mimicking the very writing techniques that have always made content engaging, persuasive, and, importantly, memorable. 

At TBB, we’ve had this discussion many times over. Should we change the way we’ve always written? Reconsider every writing convention that’s become labelled ‘an AI tell’? Avoid use of em dashes? A side note on the latter: you won’t find a single em dash anywhere in our copy. Em dashes are indeed an AI tell, because AI models default to American English conventions and they have now become so frequently shoehorned in, in place of commas or full stops. The three types of ‘dash’ – a hyphen, en dash, and em dash – serve entirely different purposes. We use en dashes intentionally to add clear sentence structure and place emphasis on points that deserve heightened importance. However, the overriding point here is that, if we start stripping away the techniques that make our writing engaging and easy to read because AI has learned to imitate them, we’re no longer writing the highest-quality copy. We’d be writing to satisfy a misconception, instead of standing by our craft and our commitment to our clients. 

What AI cannot be relied on for

When you work with The Bigger Boat, you’re investing in more than copywriting. You’re investing in a team that protects one of your most valuable commercial assets. The power of your brand voice should never be underestimated. We take our time to carefully construct every sentence around your personality, audience needs, tone of voice, and business objectives.

Our role is to make sure your content doesn’t sound like everyone else’s, particularly as more businesses turn to the same AI tools and predictable, formulaic outputs. Consistency doesn’t mean sounding perfectly polished at every brand touchpoint, as AI would have you believe. It means sounding authentic and protecting the nuances that make your brand unmistakably yours. We work hard to make sure you’re recognisable. The more distinctive your voice, the harder you are to imitate and the easier you are to remember. Yes, AI can help you generate content – but it can’t decide what your brand should sound like, what it should stand for, and how it should make people feel. And we take exactly the same approach to balancing AI and human creativity in brand design and every other discipline across the business. 

Great thought leadership comes from lived experience

Your audience doesn’t care for perfectly constructed sentences that skim the surface of a topic. The best thought leadership content – that’s engaging and resonates on a personal level – is built on perspective and expertise garnered through years of experience and dedication to the profession. 

When we write on behalf of your subject matter experts, we’re drawing out years of industry experience, commercial understanding, and genuine, informed opinion. We ask the questions that unpick the compelling stories behind the business – the lessons and insights that only they can share – and then we shape them into narratives we know will resonate with customers, journalists, and the wider industry keen to hear the latest news and opinion from them. AI can easily replicate patterns in language and mimic writing tricks of the trade that have existed for generations. What it can’t replicate is lived experience, emotion, and empathy in the way that subject matter experts naturally write. AI hasn’t been through times of change, navigated fluctuating markets, built relationships with customers, or learned from success and failure. Most importantly, it doesn’t hold an opinion of its own.

For anyone relying too heavily on AI to produce their copy, the risk isn’t just flat, emotionless content that lacks specificity – it’s the gradual erosion of everything that makes your brand recognisable. Over time, your voice will become diluted, your perspective will disappear, your content will sound the same as every other brand you’re competing with, and your customers will become confused and begin to lose trust in you. Let us take the heat off your brand with our AI toolkit that serves as your brand’s governance and protection at all times. 

The writing path forward

We’ll continue to embrace AI where it genuinely improves efficiency and supports better, premium-quality work – it’s a great tool for kickstarting some of our most creative ideation sessions, for example, or supporting with early research. But when it comes to thought leadership (whether for the media or your owned channels), opinion-led content, and any longer-form strategic pieces that define your brand, our writers will continue with what comes naturally to them – writing with experience, empathy, and creative judgment. They get to the heart of your brand better than any machine ever will. 

As AI keeps evolving, so will perceptions of what ‘looks obviously AI’, and we won’t rewrite the rules of quality copy every time this happens. We’ll keep writing strategically, thoughtfully, and with an unwavering objective, which is to protect the one thing AI will never be able to: what makes your brand unmistakably yours.