Rage Against Greige: How To Achieve Human-Sounding Content With AI

Introduction

You can’t swing a cat these days without hitting a pile of bad AI-generated content. Most of it’s easy to spot. It usually kicks off with something like, “In today’s fast-paced digital landscape…” and then dribbles on in paragraph after paragraph of… not much. It’s like that scene in Men in Black where an alien tries to pass as human. Looks the part, mostly sounds the part—but you know something’s off.

The biggest tell isn’t the em dash (RIP)—it’s the hollow feeling you get afterward. A kind of emptiness, like you just ate a bag of chips and are somehow still hungry an hour later.

So what did the tech bros do in response to the slop? “I know,” they said. “Let’s invent tools that humanize AI writing!” Except instead of adding soul, those tools just bleach the content. All the color, quirks, and human peculiarities—gone in the name of clarity and flow. Cool cool cool.

“The biggest tell isn’t the em dash — it’s the hollow feeling you get afterward. A kind of emptiness, like you just ate a bag of chips and are somehow still hungry an hour later.”

Here’s the real problem: it’s not just a vibe issue. At the heart of it, it’s a revenue issue. Content is how your audience learns to trust you. It’s the bridge they walk across to reach your offer. And if your content feels half-assed? Most people (me included) assume your service will be too. “No, you may not have my money.”

Today, I want to walk you through what’s really behind the sameness in AI-generated content, and what writing actually human content looks like.

But first: let’s talk art school.

Time to Rage Against Greige

When I was in art school, color theory was my obsession. I’d sit for hours mixing every possible hue on my palette. If you’ve ever had paint under your fingernails, you’ll know what happens when you mix all the colors together: you get greige. A flat, greyish-beige. Technically neutral and utterly lifeless.

Greige was what I used to kill the vibrancy of any hue, and it’s exactly what happens when you use open LLMs (Large Language Models). No matter how long you spend prompting them into submission, you’ll still get greige.

“It’s not just a vibe issue. At the heart of it, it’s a revenue issue. Content is how your audience learns to trust you.”

And here’s the kicker: the more AI content we churn out, the more the models train on that same content, and (you guessed it) the more generic everything becomes. It’s content inbreeding if you will.

A piece from the University of Calgary puts it like this: “AI tools use statistical modelling to generate content, calculating the most likely correct response.”

Key words? Calculating and Statistical.

Not “thinking.” Math.

This matters because we’re now dealing with both a problem and a massive opportunity. The problem? If we keep doing what everyone else is doing, our content becomes invisible. Just another greige blob in the feed. The opportunity? To become a rage against greige kind of creator.

If you learn to use AI without outsourcing your voice and vision, you’ll be miles ahead by this time next year.

Why Most “Fix It” Advice Fails

There are two common attempts to make AI content sound better. Neither works.

1. Prompt-and-pray

This is the “mega-prompt manifesto” method. People write pages of instructions trying to coax their LLM into obedience. Don’t get me wrong this can work well with fine-tuned models. But with open tools like ChatGPT? You’ll hit limits fast. Recall is weak. Adherence breaks down. And no matter how many times your GPT apologizes for not meeting your standards, it’ll eventually fall back on its old tricks. It’s like trying to teach a fish to fly. Don’t be mad at it, it’s just doing what it was built to do.

2. Humanizer tools

These are worse. You’ve probably seen the ones that promise to rewrite AI-generated text to make it more “readable” and “natural.” Except the result is robotic in a different way: smoother, but stripped of anything human. It’s like pouring bleach over your prose. Clean? Yes. Lively? No.

The Top 10 AI Tendencies (With Examples)

Watch out for these horsemen when drafting with AI.

1. Overblown importance or symbolism

“This etymology highlights the enduring legacy of the community’s resistance...”

Sounds deep. Says nothing.

2. Tourist-brochure puffery

“Nestled in the heart of the region...”

No human talks like this unless they’re holding a glass of boxed wine at a timeshare pitch.

Surface-level analysis

3. “The population stood at 56,998, creating a lively and dynamic community.”

How? Why? Based on what? (Exactly.)

4. AI-bait vocabulary

Pivotal. Underscore. Vibrant. Tapestry. Delve.

Retire them.

5. Faux nuance via “not X, but Y”

“It’s not just a structure, but a symbol.”

Cue eye roll.

6. Formulaic “challenges and future prospects”

“Despite these challenges, the future looks bright.”

Yawn.

7. Vague attribution

“Experts say...”

Name one. I’ll wait.

8. Rule of three

“Innovation, collaboration, and sustainability.”

Save the padding for your bra.

9. Markdown leaks

## Key Contributions or **Bold headers** in places they don’t belong.

10. Speculative nonsense

“While details aren’t known, it likely played a key role…”

Translation: We’re making this up.

Psst—copy this list and paste it into your editorial SOPs. Your content will thank you.

What We Mean By Human- Sounding AI Content

Sameness isn’t just about tone. It’s about editorial neutrality. In other words, content that doesn’t stand for anything, solve anything, or show anything.

I use AI constantly. In fact, I used it while writing this blog. But I’ve trained my models to understand my voice, and more importantly, I never outsource the strategy. The human part? That’s me. Every time.

Even the most finessed AI draft falls short unless you’re willing to step in as editor-in-chief of your own ideas. Not just for tone tweaks or casual storytelling, but real human intelligence: making decisions, offering solutions, creating meaning. The resonant approach becomes less about human-sounding AI- content and more about AI- powered human content. See what I did there?

To elevate your content miles above what is out there, you need to add:

• A clear point of view

• Lived experience or stories

• Colorful, original language

• Stylistic flair

• Actual thinking

How I Do It (Without Spending 5 Hours in Google Docs)

Picture this: a gorgeous set of marble bookends shaped like winged Bernini sculptures. Between them? Your AI tools. The bookends represent your human mind. There’s one at the start, one at the finish. That’s your editorial system. I even made a handy visual for you:

Here’s my process (steal this workflow!)

Step 1: The idea comes from me and is often dictated on my phone while walking through Costco or doing other mom stuff.

Step 2: I drop that voice note into my GPT vault and have a trained model help me research and build an outline. I also use a trained GPT to cross-check it against my content strategy and find gaps.

Step 3: Once the outline’s solid, I use my fine-tuned, voice GPT to draft it out.

Step 4: Then I step in with my human editorial hand and take it to a finish. Because my custom GPT is trained on my content (not the internet slop), my drafts take me 80% of the way there.

Step 5: From idea to polished post? About an hour or two depending on the length and complexity of a piece. Once I have that gold-standard draft, I can repurpose it using (you guessed it) a couple of other trained GPTs.

TL;DR

The pendulum swung a little too far in AI’s direction these past few years. It’s time to rebalance.

LLMs are incredible tools, but they’re not writers. Not strategists. Not humans.

At my agency, we’re focusing on content operations and strategy because that’s where the real leverage is. Build an AI-powered system that fits your business, and you can offload the grunt work while keeping the creative control. It’s very much like having your own content team.

And that, friends, is how you scale content without sacrificing connection.

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About the Author

Diliana Popova is a content strategist and writer as well as the founder of SpellBook a boutique agency that builds Human-first, AI-powered content systems for service based businesses with lean teams.

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