Grow with AI, without losing your voice
- ORSI VERES
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Why so much content suddenly sounds the same.
Like most of us, I am signed up to more email newsletters than I can count, from personal ones to business, everything from real estate to dentists, financial advisors, marketing and sales, and fitness studios. All of them sell different products and services. When I see their emails it is really hard to tell the difference, because they all sound like the same person wrote them.
How I can tell AI wrote these emails
There are a handful of lines that show up again and again, no matter who sent the email, and you probably see them too:
"We've all been there." Or "Let's be honest." (the empathy opener)
"Here's the truth." Or "Here's what nobody tells you." (the insight signpost)
"It's not about this, it's about that." (the negation reframe)
"Louder, flashier, better funded." (the rule of three)
"Stop doing this. Start doing that." (the imperative flip)
"Every. Single. Time." Or "Full stop." (the mic-drop closer)
What this tells me, without knowing more about these businesses, is that all five of them used AI to write their emails, and barely one of them had a human who looked at what went out before sending it.
Why it is worth paying attention
The problem with this is that the way AI talks slowly becomes the way we talk. If the patterns are not the way you truly speak, if this is not part of your vocabulary, you will slowly blend in with how everyone else talks.
The problem with this is that the way AI talks slowly becomes the way we talk.
Think of a couple who have been together for years. One of them slowly picks up the other's words and little sayings, usually without noticing. The ones who notice are the friends, who might even point it out, that you suddenly sound like your spouse, or you sound like your mom. Or a group of teenagers who do not just dress alike, they start to use the same slang. This is normal. We are people, and we want to fit in with whoever we spend our time around.
But for those of us running businesses built on reputation and human connection, fitting in is exactly the problem. Sounding like everyone else does nothing for us in terms of sales and marketing. We need to sound like no one else.
It is like the frog in the pot. The water warms up slowly and the frog never notices. If this is not how you normally sound, and you start taking on these words, you will not feel it happening. One day you are writing "friction," "landed," "delve," "lean into," "unpack," "resonate," words that were never part of your vocabulary, and you cannot say when they moved in.
AI is a prediction machine
AI was trained on a huge amount of data, books, websites, recent research, and then mathematical models broke it all down into tokens and created logical connections to find patterns. So it can tell, by the pattern, which words usually come after which. It has none of your lived experience, so it gives you whatever sounds right, even when that is not true or yours. And it likes to agree with you. Push back with "are you sure" and it will often back down, whether it was wrong or not.
The real risk for your business
Most people worry that AI is going to take their jobs. For those of us who build a business on reputation and human connection, the risk that matters more is that AI will slowly make us sound like everyone else, and that wears down the trust the whole business stands on.
It is the same as the friend who notices you using your spouse's words. Your clients have known you for years, they know how you sounded even before you started using AI. When your emails get less personal, when you leave out the jokes, when you leave out the personal touches, they will slowly notice you getting more distant. Even though that is not your intention, they will feel the shift, and they will think you do not have time for them anymore.
Your prospects have it worse. They are weighing you against other businesses, they are signed up to those competitors' newsletters too, and when all of you send emails that sound like one person wrote them, what is going to make them buy from you?
What actually works
So what can you do about it, other than going back to writing every word yourself?
Most people buy a prompt, or a package of prompts. There are packs of them everywhere, from a few dollars to a few hundred, and they promise to fix this fast. A prompt will create content for you fast, but it is the same structure everyone else is using, which is exactly why you blend in.
What works is giving the tool a foundation to write from. In practice that is a handful of plain files you can carry into any tool:
What your business is and who you serve.
How you sound, and the words you would never use.
How you actually do each task, like the way you write an email.
What the tool should remember about you.
Your rules, the things it must never do.
You write them once in your own words, and they work the same in ChatGPT, in Claude, or in whatever comes out next year. You own them, which matters, because tools fall in and out of favor and you do not want your voice stuck inside one of them.
You own them, which matters, because tools fall in and out of favor and you do not want your voice stuck inside one of them.
Start with your voice
You do not have to build all of that this month. Start with the voice file. Open a note on your phone and put down:
How you sound, in a few words.
The phrases you use a lot.
The words you would never say.
What you actually believe about your work.
A sample of something you wrote yourself, before you ever used AI.
When you read an email and can feel that AI wrote it, paste the line into the list of words you never want to sound like. Hand that one note to any tool and it already changes most of what comes back.
Used this way, AI gives you your time back. It takes the repetitive work off your plate, the way a good executive assistant would, so you have more hours for the parts of the business that need a real person. It only works, though, when you have taught it to sound like you first.
The people who do well with AI over the next few years will be the ones who taught it their voice before they let it speak for them. The tools are only going to get better at sounding human in general. Sounding like you is the part you have to protect.
Meet the expert:
Orsi partners with women business owners to elevate their branding, website, and course launches while supporting their long-term growth. She provides ongoing guidance and strategic refinements to ensure their business stays aligned, effective, and positioned for success. With a focus on continuous improvement, she helps them build a strong, scalable brand that attracts and converts with ease.
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