Open any AI-drafted blog post and the opening paragraph is almost always interchangeable with the opening paragraph of any other AI-drafted blog post. "In an era of", "in today's rapidly evolving", "as the landscape continues to shift". These are the high-probability tokens a model reaches for when it doesn't know what your post is about.
Why models default to the generic
A language model picks the most likely next word given everything that came before. The most likely word, on average across the internet, is almost never the most specific one. Specificity is rare; genericism is mean-reverting. So unedited model output drifts toward the centre of the distribution — which is exactly the wrong place for a post that has to earn a click.
The fix is concrete nouns
- Replace "comprehensive solution" with the specific feature.
- Replace "in today's landscape" with the year, the company, the situation.
- Replace "significant impact" with a number.
- Replace "various stakeholders" with the actual people.
Before
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are facing unprecedented challenges. Our comprehensive solution leverages cutting-edge technology to drive significant impact for various stakeholders across the organisation.
After
In November 2024, three of our biggest customers asked the same question in one week: could the dashboard show invoice age by client, not just the total outstanding? It took us a fortnight to ship. Here's what we learned about pricing the feature, and why we ended up not charging for it.