The Art of Crafting Content That Won’t Give Audiences the AI IckThe Art of Crafting Content That Won’t Give Audiences the AI Ick
Some content screams, "A robot wrote this!" Only a human brain can craft perfectly flawed content that resonates. Here's how to create more of it.
July 7, 2025
I’ve just reread The Creative Act by music producer Rick Rubin, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
In the book, Rubin reflects on the unpredictable relationship between the effort we invest and the outcomes we achieve. Sometimes, breakthroughs arrive effortlessly, while seemingly minor details demand days of meticulous attention. There’s no way to know which will leave the greatest imprint on the final work.
“What ultimately makes a work great is the sum total of the tiniest details,” he writes.
This is a critical insight in the age of AI-generated content and content-by-committee marketing. The paradox is stark: As generative AI accelerates content production, the opportunity for differentiation is shifting toward something profoundly human.
But what exactly is that thing?
After all, much of the discourse today, especially in social media comments and among AI zealots, suggests that AI is becoming nearly indistinguishable from human content. (You know, other than the alleged overuse of em dashes, the beat-poetry formatting, and that weird, default tone that sounds like your overly enthusiastic cousin just discovered personal branding.)
So, where’s the line? What makes human-created content different?
In a word: details. And, more specifically, knowing when to stop adding them.
Ben Affleck once said, “Craftsman[ship] is knowing how to work. Art is knowing when to stop.” It sounds right, and emotionally, it is.
That instinct — the human urge to pause, to refine, to leave space — is something no model can truly mimic.
(I’ll come back to that quote a little later.)
Intention vs. imitation: the great content divide
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve written about generative AI and marketing’s hyper-fixation on speed more than half a dozen times in the last six months.
I’m one Chrome tab away from shouting at a chatbot to get off my lawn.
And even I’m tired of the “but AI isn’t human” refrain. It’s practically a genre of its own now: heartfelt essays about the ineffable spark of creativity, how algorithms can’t feel love, or why a language model can’t reverse-engineer your favorite poem.
All valid points, if a bit esoteric. And, maybe, slightly wrong.
But most people have now gained enough experience to start to sense the distinction. Not as a philosophical idea, but in the lived experience of what AI-generated content feels like.
For example, I got a marketing email the other day that was obviously personalized with AI. The AI tool picked up on my title (chief troublemaker) and used it to kick off the note. Here’s the opening line:
“As the Chief Troublemaker, we know you love chaos.”
But that one detail (while technically correct) isn’t just off; it’s a dead giveaway that no human crafted something just for me. Sure, “chaos” can make sense with “troublemaker.” But, emotionally, it doesn’t ring true.
That line didn’t miss the mark so much as remind me there was no emotion behind the pen. It didn’t feel crafted; it felt algorithmically confident in its misunderstanding.
So when I say AI lacks intention, I don’t mean it in the misty, abstract, everyone-hold-hands sense. I mean something you can see. I mean the content that results when people obsess over word choice, sweat a single line break, or argue for hours over whether “chaos” is the right connotation for the intent they’re trying to convey.
That kind of intention (the maddening, joyful, obsessively precise human kind) isn’t just our edge. It’s the message. And, through it, we show ourselves more clearly as the medium.
This isn’t just a creative critique; it’s a strategy warning shot. Because if audiences are becoming more attuned to this kind of content (and I believe they are), then marketers have to consider what’s next: Generative AI won’t just shape machine-made content. It’s poised to influence how humans write and create, too.
In other words, if your business focus stays locked on speed and efficiency, it won’t matter whether the words come from a chatbot or an over-caffeinated “vibe marketer” juggling a fleet of agentic AI bots. The result will be the same: a slow, quiet drift toward sounding like everyone else.
In a world where attention is scarce, people will continue to gravitate toward what they perceive as valuable. Which means, in that not-so-distant future, intentional craft won’t be a differentiator. It’ll be the hallmark of the last brand standing.
Craft as a differentiator: details are the new depth
Wait, that’s it! That’s why the Ben Affleck quote always sat a little wrong with me.
Remember, he said:
“Craftsman[ship] is knowing how to work. Art is knowing when to stop.”
It feels true. Emotionally, it lands. But sit with it for more than a beat, and it kind of unravels. Because “knowing when to stop” isn’t the dividing line between art and craft, it’s simply restraint. And restraint is a form of our craft.
Restraint isn’t just about working within self-imposed limits. It’s also about embracing the pause. The breath before the send button. The second look that turns a decent idea into a better one. Whether it’s a budget ceiling, a character count, a brand voice, or your own internal bar for “better than good enough,” restraint helps you filter the noise and make better choices.
For example, consider that email I got. You have to assume that the same email (lightly personalized by AI) went out to dozens (maybe hundreds) of other people. Crafting with restraint would mean reviewing, debating, and considering word choices like “chaos” in that one email to that one influencer and deciding not to use that word in that case. Or, even better, making that word matter by adding an emotional detail (e.g., “We know you love turning chaos into clarity...”).
And, perhaps most essential to the meaning of restraint, knowing when enough is enough and having the discipline to call it done.
If anything, Affleck's quote is a perfect example of something that sounds right but doesn’t quite hold up under inspection. It’s a detail that gives itself away — not because it’s sloppy, but because it’s confidently pointed just a few degrees off.
Ironically, that imprecision is what makes it feel human. And that’s what makes it a great quote.
But, wait a minute, didn’t I just get the ick from an email that made a similar mistake? I did. And that’s the twist. That kind of imprecision is what AI-generated content tends to do, too.
AI nails the shape, the cadence, the motivational quote … but not the judgment. Not the choice. Not the knowing when to stop, or why you might decide not to.
Our craft, when we think of it as a differentiator and a uniquely human superpower, isn’t about getting every detail precisely right. It’s about choosing which details matter, imprecise or not.
It’s about knowing that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is leave something out (or in). Miss the mark slightly. Be imperfect on purpose.
That’s not just what separates people from machines. That’s what makes what people create feel human in the first place.
How to practice the craft of choosing
So, how do we create this differentiation? Well, first: Slow the hell down.
Seriously. Just breathe. Back away from the CMS. Put the prompt down. Walk outside and remember you’re a human being, not a vending machine for e-books, blog posts, images, and headlines.
Intentional craft will differentiate your work, whether you’re writing, designing, recording, coding, or collaborating. And it can’t be rushed for speed’s sake alone.
Deadlines still matter, of course. But the smallest, most human details rarely survive when you’re sprinting toward “good enough to ship” or chasing the dopamine hit of breaking things faster.
And if your creative or marketing team is currently operating under a service-level agreement based on output speed? I’d like to have a word with whoever set that up. Change that immediately. Or, at the very least, make room for one that includes “quality of thought” as a metric.
Here are three ways I’ve found to help teams bring that pause (and care) into the way they work:
1. Make room for friction (on purpose)
Build time into your process for review and reconsideration. Add space between drafts, reviews, and approvals. Whatever your cadence, create a gap wide enough for doubt, gut checks, and curiosity.
Then, once the pause has done its work, take a “Why is this here?” pass. Ask that question of every element (headline, image, emoji, subhead, call to action, etc.). If you can’t justify its presence beyond “it sounds good,” then sharpen it, cut it, or make it matter.
Not everything needs to be perfect. But it should all be intentional. As Rick Rubin puts it, “When the work has five mistakes, it’s not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might be.”
This two-step habit — pause, then question — is how you rescue your content from sounding like everything else. And more importantly, it’s how you make sure it sounds like the uncommon you.
2. Start a swipe file of the unpolished
Not everything you collect for inspiration needs to be slick. It’s often better if it’s not.
Start capturing ads, essays, videos, moments, and other content that hit you in the gut or made you pause. Then ask: “What was the one detail that made that stick? What choice did someone make that wasn’t obvious, but felt right?”
Studying those moments sharpens your instincts about the kinds of details that matter to you. Not the textbook ones. The human ones.
3. Give the machine something worth editing
Whether you’re working with generative AI or a cross-functional team that starts content from a templated draft, don’t just jump in and tweak. Reframe your job as a curator of intent.
Don’t ask, “Is this good?” Ask, “Is this ours?” or “Is this mine?”
Use the AI (or the team draft) as a provocation, not a product. Bring back the friction. Ask why a phrase is there. Remove the auto-formatted conclusion and write one from scratch. Choose something. Reject something. Shape something.
One of my favorite ways to avoid the trap of leaning too heavily on AI is to view every response to a prompt as ending with a question mark. Pretend the AI tool is asking you what you think. (And stop paying attention when it tells you how brilliant you are before it rewrites your prose.)
In other words: Don’t just edit. Reclaim.
Craft as the new trust currency
So here we are, still sweating the details.
If you take anything from this column, don’t let it be that perfection is the goal. Or that AI is bad. Or even that craft means precious, slow, artisanal work.
Take this: Intention matters. Judgment matters. Choice matters. And, most importantly, that spending human time and capital to develop those things creates value over time.
What’s better for business in the long run:
A smaller team that cost-effectively creates a ton of increasingly average work
A bigger team that slowly and expensively creates a smaller quantity of the most diverse and differentiated work in the marketplace?
Ben Affleck said, “Art is knowing when to stop.” That might be true, but not because that choice is an art. Knowing when to stop is part of the craft.
And knowing when enough is enough, when something hits just right, is a form of emotional mastery that no machine can yet fake.
Rick Rubin wrote that mistakes don’t disqualify a piece of work (and might be what completes it).
And that’s the point. Humanity lies not in precision or accuracy but in the pause. The edit. The comma moved and moved back again.
Great work isn’t finished when there’s no detail left to add. It’s finished when every detail feels like it was left there on purpose.
It’s your story. Sweat the details. That’s how you’ll tell it well.
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