6 Reasons Your Brand Needs a Human Voice in the Age of AI Content
Is the age of AI banishing human writers?
With AI language models able to churn out masses of text at the click of a button, many writers and producers of online content have felt concerned that they’re being displaced. Their worries aren’t without good reason; the excitement for large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini has seemed to reach almost every aspect of our lives.
For instance, users are increasingly relying on AI-generated search results for answers to their health questions, meal planning, and numerous other queries. Users don’t even have to click through to the actual web pages these answers are drawing from, rendering them faceless contributors with none of the benefits.
This has instigated serious debate over moral concerns, with OpenAI admitting they wouldn’t have been able to create ChatGPT without training it on copyrighted material. Authors and content writers are angry that their work is being used without acknowledgement. In fact, seventeen authors, including George RR Martin, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2023 for copyright infringement.
Moral concerns have also reached universities, which have struggled to establish rules around AI use due to the difficulty in detecting plagiarism. So-called ‘AI detectors’ have sprung up, and been adopted by schools and universities, despite OpenAI itself admitting they don’t work.
We now have AI-generated songs, AI-produced summaries of Amazon product reviews, and AI-human relationships via character.ai. Undoubtedly, AI is ubiquitous.
But this isn’t necessarily a green light for brands to stop writing their own content. Users can tell when it’s AI-generated, and when they’re coming to you directly, they want the real deal. So, if you are going to get a helping hand from AI, you’ll need to be careful with your prompts and editing process to ensure there’s enough human input throughout.
This article will explore the ways in which AI content can fail brands, explaining 6 reasons why brands need human voices. We’ll also give some top tips for protecting and expressing your brand voice within your content.
Let’s dive in:
6 reasons your brand needs a human voice in the age of AI content
1. AI content can damage trust
While AI has become more sophisticated, audiences have become more discerning. People are quicker to recognise content that’s most likely AI-generated because they can intuitively spot the signs.
This happened with CNET in 2023. The media website specialising in tech news was caught publishing AI-written articles, some giving personal finance advice, that were full of errors. The damage to the brand’s trust resulted in Wikipedia deeming it no longer a reliable source of information.
While AI can produce factually correct content, often creatively, it’s not always undetectable to the human eye. Brands that communicate in obviously human-written content stand out as more trustworthy. Trust is essential if brands are going to build credibility and connect with customers in a deeper and more authentic way.
People might want to feel warmth, vulnerability, and humour when they engage with digital content, but most of all, they want to believe what’s being put to them. If there’s doubt over whether your content is AI-generated or not (which, admittedly, isn’t the easiest distinction sometimes), users are more likely to lose trust in your brand.
On the other hand, if your content reads as authentic, personal, and reliable, users are more likely to feel connected and stay to read more of what you’ve got to say.
2. Brands need to protect their integrity and reputation
Closely connected to trust is your brand’s integrity and reputation. It’s tempting to automate your business operations where you can, but AI content risks diluting and misrepresenting your brand voice.
Brands that clearly rely too heavily on AI-generated content may lack a strong editorial voice. Without this, brands might accidentally publish content that conflicts with itself, misses opportunities to connect to brand values, or fails to address its audience.
Users are likely to see brands like this as out of touch or wishy-washy. They might lose respect for you and judge your brand as unworthy of their time. It’s up to you to prove them wrong! By taking an active part in shaping your brand’s voice (which we’ll explore in the final section), you can reinforce and protect its identity, positioning it for connecting authentically with audiences.
3. AI content can be generic
Another reason why human voices can’t (and shouldn’t) be replaced by AI relates to style and originality.
AI content tends to read as generic and is often strictly formulaic. Though it’s pretty much always grammatically perfect, brands should be more worried about resembling every other brand getting AI to write similar content.
This is because of the way LLMs are made. Trained on large datasets of existing content, AI content is not brand new. It’s reproduced from what’s already been written. As a result, AI-generated content typically follows the same sorts of structures and uses the same sorts of phrasing.
The product of this process is content that lacks originality, despite how polished and refined it appears to be. When this is repeated by countless brands, the internet is flooded by articles and social media posts that blur into one. Audiences find it harder to trust and form emotional bonds with content if it resembles everything else they see online.
While AI content can be useful in lots of ways, human content has the capacity to be unforgettable and surprising. By imbuing your brand voice into the content you produce, you ensure you don’t sound like everyone else.
4. Brand creativity is irreplaceable
So, we’ve established that brands using AI to produce content face the challenge of standing out against the crowd. The way to do so lies in creativity, which is fortunately something AI isn’t very good at.
Though AI can definitely mimic style if it’s prompted to, it can’t understand a brand’s particular personality, values, or emotional tone. Creativity allows brands to write in any tone they like, maximising their ability to connect with audiences. Since your human team members will be equipped with an understanding of irony, restraint, dry wit, and cultural sensitivity, they are better able to capture a brand’s individuality compared to LLMs.
If brands can assert their originality and creative abilities, they’ll be able to cut through the noise and convey to audiences a unique voice, unexpected approach, or fresh idea. Readers are more likely to understand your brand as one that thinks for itself and is able to offer something no one else can replicate.
5. Humans just do better at context
Another way in which AI often fails is in understanding context in the same way humans do. Context (who the audience is, what’s happening in the world, what has been said before, and what emotional response is appropriate now) is easily juggled by humans and essential for connecting with audiences in delicate moments.
Although it appears to, AI cannot currently truly grasp meaning or intent. When it’s generating text, it’s simply predicting the best next word in a sequence based on what it’s learnt. So, though answers are coherent, they’re not founded in the LLM understanding the topic.
This means AI content can often feel inappropriate, flat, or slightly off. It might sound too cheerful in a serious moment, or too formal in a moment that calls for warmth and familiarity. It might manifest in a misunderstanding of cultural sensitivity, which can be essential for brands getting communication just right. In addition, while AI can imitate, it cannot speak from personal experience or wisdom.
Although AI can be prompted to write differently for a tweet, blog post, or press release, it cannot understand why this change in tone is important. In contrast, a human writer will deftly adapt their approach in order to create something that truly resonates.
6. Brands can be meticulous with bias and factual inaccuracies
In May 2025, writer Marco Buscaglia claimed responsibility for a summer booklist that appeared in several American newspapers. Out of the fifteen books listed, only five were real. Written by AI, readers were furious that the booklist could have made it to publication without these glaring errors being discovered.
This unhappy event demonstrates how AI, if left to produce content unchecked, can make serious factual mistakes. This phenomenon is called ‘hallucination’ in the world of AI.
We know not everything we read on the internet is true, and this cautiousness should be extended to AI. After all, it’s trained on content from the internet itself. It naturally absorbs the same biases and misinformation that we find across the World Wide Web.
While AI is powerful, it’s not perfect. Its tendency to hallucinate might be its most serious limitation, especially for brands that need to appear reliable and trustworthy. Left unchecked, your AI-generated content might reinforce stereotypes, express outdated perspectives, or present flawed interpretations as facts.
Even if its mistakes aren’t huge, small errors can weaken your brand’s credibility. A simple mistaken statistic or culturally insensitive phrase can make audiences perceive your brand as careless, tone-deaf, or untrustworthy. The worst part is how long this trust can take to repair. Human involvement is essential for checking that content is correct and aligns with a brand’s principles.
Best practices for expressing your brand voice
Now you know just how much your human input has to offer, it’s time to reflect on how you can refine and express it. You can do so with the help of AI, but you can also go it alone. If you wish to steer completely clear of AI content, consider the following advice for expressing your unique brand voice:
- Create guidelines for your brand voice that dictate tone, vocabulary, sentence structure, and humour.
- Use real stories, viewpoints, and experiences in your content. This could be behind-the-scenes insights, CEO opinion pieces, or customer stories.
- Ensure emotional intelligence, empathy, and sensitivity are your top priority.
If you wish to make use of AI for content generation but also preserve your brand voice, consider the following advice:
- Feed AI your brand’s human-written content to learn from. Instruct it to use your content guidelines and ensure it adheres to them.
- Give it prompts that are thoughtful of your intended final product. You should have clear instructions about the opinions and tone you wish to be expressed in the intended content.
- Treat AI as a drafting tool, not your sole writer. Ensure you always review AI content for clarity, tone, factual accuracy, and brand personality.
- Educate your team about AI blind spots and how they can write effective prompts.
With these best practices, you’ll be well on your way to expressing your brand voice in whatever medium you choose.
Final thoughts
If you feel like your business would benefit from extra guidance in branding, reach out to us here at purpleplanet. purplebrand is our branding service that helps you give your customers familiarity in every small detail.
We know you want to build trust with audiences across every touchpoint, which is why we offer a thorough range of branding services dedicated to your business’s particular needs.