Note: the “AI smell” I’m talking about here isn’t about word choice — it’s about structure.
When it comes to wording, use our “ancestral” prompt below:
[I plan to leave a comment online. The topic is the content I will send you below (everything after “Start:” ). I want you to write in English imitating a non-native English speaker. They are usually rigid and literal, do not have a high-level vocabulary, do not understand slang or abbreviations, and do not use polite words (like “please”). Just send me the converted content directly. Do not add anything else. Do not interpret, only translate word by word and sentence by sentence, and keep the length basically the same as the original text. Start:]
So how do we remove the more “professional AI” feel from a piece of writing? There’s no universal, one-and-done solution. (Don’t worry — as a blogger, I never use AI to publish content on platforms. Everything I post is typed manually.)
Why? Because if there were such a solution, it would gradually turn that “new” style into the next version of the AI smell.
When we say something doesn’t “feel like AI,” what we usually mean is that it doesn’t sound like us. But AI outputs are essentially an average style distilled from training data — a greatest common denominator. You can’t just add a few fixed, universal tricks and expect to completely reverse that.
So instead, we need AI to learn each of our unique writing styles. That means designing your own “skill” — one that evolves as you continue writing. This skill should define your vocabulary preferences, taboos, habits, norms, and so on.
Here’s a relatively reliable training workflow you can try (inspired in part by Baoyu):
Step 1: Initialize your writing style skill.
Step 2: Feed AI (for example, Claude Code) five of your favorite original articles.
Step 3: Ask it to analyze their characteristics and generate a draft version of your skill.
Step 4: Based on that skill, give AI a topic and let it try writing a new article.
Step 5: Take the AI-written piece and rewrite it sentence by sentence in your own voice — adjust everything until it feels natural and truly yours. (Do NOT tell AI which sentences are bad or unacceptable. That’s inefficient and often reduces precision.)
Step 6: Run git diff or use a similar text comparison method. Show AI the differences and say:
“Please analyze what changes I made, summarize the patterns, and optimize my writing style skill.”
Step 7: Repeat steps 4–6 about five times, and you’ll see noticeable improvement. The more iterations, the better. By around the tenth round, it may write more like you than you do.
You might say, “So this is just iterating on a prompt?”
Well, the prompt is only the presentation layer. The real process is about AI understanding and imitating your style.
If you work in customer service, once this skill is properly trained, the tone and phrasing of replies will sound exactly like you. Add a solid knowledge base, and the responses can even surpass your own. Combine it with OpenClaw and enable instant auto-replies — and if someone is replying to you instantly all the time, you might start wondering whether they’re actually human.
Give it a try.