My Struggle with Using AI for Blogging

For the past few years, we’ve been inundated with videos, content creators, and PC manufacturers telling you to get on board with AI (Artificial Intelligence) to help you get things done and make a profit. These seem to be promising and exciting times. But as a blogger with a hunger to be completely honest and authentic, even using AI as an editor can be a struggle. You can skip to those struggles below. Here are my thoughts on using AI for blogging so far:

The Addictive Side to Using AI

Let’s be honest. Many of us are excited, fulfilled, and possibly addicted to using AI nowadays, and we can’t wait to get busy `working’ with or alongside our `AI assistant’ of choice. That might mean Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, CoPilot, or maybe a mix of your favorite few. (Let me know if I forgot to mention yours.)

It feels as if AI is our friend, our invested business partner, and – with every positive chat response and piece of advice – the tool steering you to success. AI has made content creation feel promising, more focused, and as a result – a lot of fun!

The AI Promise

As a blogger, and perhaps for many of us, AI promises to save you time, save you work, and get things done without you needing to lift a finger. Many people are able to churn out content – like blog posts, images, and videos, with just a simple or single prompt.

A blog can go from zero to 60 posts in 20 seconds. For some people, that’s a win. For them – it’s a shortcut, it’s a cheat code that promises to bring them success.

What About Effort?

But does the promise of not putting in much effort almost disobey a universal law? We grew up with `work hard’. We started to accept `smart work’, not `hard work’. But.. No work?

What about passion, desire, experience, and authority? Do they not come into play?

And, what about `You reap what you sow’?

AI – An Awesome Business Model

The AI buzzword took the world by storm. AI companies benefit by providing you with the perfect sales person.. the AI tool itself. It’s almost the perfect product. You are sold the hope, the positivity, the affirmations, and the promise of having most of your work done for you. As for after-sales service – it doesn’t stop. It’s always there. Nice!

I Really Like Working With AI

In case this post is expected to be a rant per se, it’s not. Although I’ve always loved computers and being online, working alongside Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and other AI services like CoPilot (via Edge) has really enhanced my computing experience. I really like working with AI.

An Authentic Blogger’s Perspective of Using AI

What do I mean by authentic? For better or worse, in life and through this blog, I’m driven to help others communicate. To free themselves through self-expression – by letting it all out. At least, letting others know that they are not alone in many of the situations we find ourselves in.

To do this, I need to be brutally honest and open, and let the chips fall where they may.

So, if your whole point of blogging is to honestly support and provide others with genuine experience, empathy, compassion, and a reaching hand – you will know that your authentic expression – your real voice – is all you have to make that connection. You cannot sound like somebody else and still give it the thumbs up.
At least, I can’t.

When I Started Blogging with the Help of AI

I’ve talked in the past about using AI as an editor and not a writer.
In the early days of this blog, almost two years ago, I found myself writing as a sort of therapy. This was a rookie blogger’s mistake on my part, but seemingly a natural transition I had to go through at the time, which actually helped me to grow to love working with AI over that time.

How I Start Writing a Blog Post

I usually start by having an idea based on my real experience and thinking. For example, I’d experience something during the day and then go home and write down my random thoughts and feelings about it on Notepad in Windows. (I’ll switch to Mac in the UK).

The Notepad writing takes about an hour. Just random sentences supporting what happened, the thinking behind it, how it might affect other readers going through the same thing, and connected ideas, memories, thoughts, and stepping stones leading up to the situation. As I said, up to an hour of writing. It can be very therapeutic!

AI’s Turn

Then, I’d give those random thoughts to one of my faithful AI assistants to digest and come up with a compelling blog post structure. By this time, AI should know my voice for the most part, and it should be able to relate to my whole journey and each of my 70 or so blog posts (life events), that I’ve written over those almost two years up to this point.

At the same time, I’d suggest that AI ask me questions so that we can dial in how to structure the post, keep it universal, and focus on context and the direction I wish to take it.

Practice Makes Perfect?

In those early days of wanting to produce content and build a worthy blog, I all too quickly accepted the writing results that Grok, and then Claude produced. As long as my main point came across and the writing seemed to be professional and grammatically correct, I hit publish. I was excited. I thought I was making progress. I thought I was focused.

Garbage in, Garbage out

By now, you probably know that AI needs prompts. Those detailed commands to tell it what to do, how to act, and how to communicate, etc. If you don’t make the effort to detail what you want, and especially what you don’t want, you will likely get back less than stellar results.

Don’t Try to Please AI

I’ve owned up to being a people pleaser before. If you are new to using AI as an editor or writer, and staying authentic is your thing, be sure to focus on how you want to sound.

I’ve made the mistake of accepting too much direction, especially when obsessing over the blog with little sleep, and ended up publishing writing that didn’t sound like me at all.

My Struggles with Using AI for Blogging

If you want to write to your audience in your own voice, and your own natural style, you will have to keep a close eye on your AI drafts, edits, and advice. It’s easy to miss the AI tells, but after obsessing over my blogging journey the past couple of years, I’ve come to easily notice AI writing, and I notice it all over the internet or even in YouTube videos. Next, let’s take a look at some obvious AI tells.

AI Tells

Here are the most common AI tells that I’ve seen regularly produced by some of the most recommended AI programs:

1. The Em Dash (—)

Since AI became popular, you will notice the em dash in writing all over the place. The em dash is used to separate phrases or indicate a break in thought. Wait—What? Yet, most of us don’t even know how to type an em dash on the keyboard. To be honest, in the past, before AI, I would simply use a hyphen with spaces, which was a mistake.

Here's how you know AI wrote a blog post—it's too polished, uses em dashes in every other sentence, and somehow an old guy living paycheck-to-paycheck in Japan starts sounding like a Harvard professor.

Nowadays, although the em dash has a strong purpose, I find it almost accentuates the possibility of the writing being AI-produced, so I prefer to stay clear of them for the most part. A comfortable compromise for me is to use the en dash, a shorter dash with which you can add a space on either side ( – ).

2. “Not X, but Y” constructions

AI likes to use the rhythm – Not something, but something else.

Example:

Not because I wanted to blog, but because I wanted to help people.

This can become over dramatic and somewhat tiring to keep seeing. More to the point, some of us don’t like to be negative and don’t want to focus on or start a sentence with a negative.

3. Three-beat Lists

Have you noticed too many perfect trios?

Here’s an example of a three-beat list from one of my own posts:

There’s crisis stress: real danger, actual emergency, the kind that demands immediate action. Lost job, medical emergency, eviction notice.

If you notice too many of these in your writing, you might consider moderating them to break the rhythm.

4. The Same Word – Three Sentences

You might notice sometimes people and AI use the same word to start consecutive sentences. Anaphora is the fancy term for starting three sentences in a row with the same word. These have often been flagged by SEO tools even before AI, because they make text seem repetitive and boring to read:

The dead giveaway? 'Consider what truly matters. Consider your daily habits. Consider that you just read three sentences starting with 'consider' and now you're wondering if a chatbot is impersonating a British guy living in Japan.'

5. Words AI Overuses

Depending on your blog or what you write about, you might find AI suggesting or using words which might not align with how you naturally speak. These might not be so noticeable at first, however, after working alongside AI for some time, you will probably notice a pattern.

For my particular blog and content, I’ve noticed to try to stay away from these types of words because I’d rarely use them when talking to people face to face:

• shift / shifting
• navigate / navigating
• landscape
• transformative
• profound
• powerful (as adjective)
• intentional / intentionally
• journey (especially metaphorical use)
• space (as in “create space”)
• hold space
• delve
• empower
• resilience
• dynamic
• explore
• unlock
• cultivate
• embrace

6. Common AI Openers

When we sit down to talk with someone, we start a conversation naturally. AI, however, has a tendency to suggest somewhat dramatic story openers like:

• “In today’s world…”
• “We live in a time where…”
• “It’s easy to forget that…”
• “Many people struggle with…”

There might be a time and place for some of these, but as blog post openers, they’re rather unnatural, and try too hard to draw the reader in from the get-go.

7. Sentence-softeners/hedging words

AI sometimes avoids committing to anything, by using words like often, generally, typically, can, and in many cases. These are more subtle tells, however, many people just say what they think more directly.

8. Soothing/empathy words

For a blog like this, where we discuss self-help type of content, it’s good to be aware of overusing words like safe, permission, witness, lean into, holds space, valid, or vulnerable, etc. There are good moments to use a few, maybe, but AI tends to prioritize them a little too much.

9. Abstract wisdom nouns

Some words sound quite profound, but don’t say anything specific. Words like clarity, alignment, presence, insight, transformation, fulfillment, etc. are useable, but they summarize instead of offering details. They are less personal. It’s as if the AI is trying to sound wise. For a blogger who likes to get into the nitty gritty of feelings, the writing needs real human emotions and specifics.

Example: Clarity

AI: Once you find clarity around your purpose, everything else begins to fall into place. Person: Once I stopped pretending I knew what I was doing, things got a little less chaotic.

10. Overly tidy transitions

Another habit that AI still brings to the table is the use of noticeable common polite pivot phrases. Things like that said, ultimately, in conclusion, on reflection, and looking back, are AI’s habit of wrapping things up a little too neatly. Real people, especially in conversation, tend to speak less formally.

Is There a Spiritual Struggle with Using AI?

OK, we’re not all spiritually-minded – I get it. And maybe “spiritual” is too dramatic a word. This might just be overthinking.

I was brought up with the idea that if something matters, you work at it and you keep at it. And if it comes too easily, you question it.

AI complicates that.

If I use AI heavily and something takes off, would it feel the same? Or would there always be a voice saying, “You didn’t really build that.”

I enjoy using AI. But with blogging, writing is the part that makes it feel real. It’s the hour in Notepad and all the honesty behind it.

Perhaps this is outdated thinking. I’m not sure. Either way, I still want to recognise myself in what I publish.

Google’s View on AI and blogging

I asked Gemini about Google’s stance on AI writing for blogs.

See: Google Search Central’s official guidelines on AI-generated content

This was good to hear. It puts the responsibility back on us. Maybe there’s hope for my writing, yet – warts and all!

AI is Really Helping

I can’t get enough of blogging in my free time and seeing where I can take this blog. And AI is advancing quickly. There are so many YouTube videos of excited entrepreneurs spearheading the AI evolution, that it can seem daunting as an older, solo guy wanting to get in on the fun.

Fortunately, so far this year, I’ve taken some small steps. For example, thanks to using Claude Code and NotebookLM for the first time yesterday, I now have a midlife transition quiz to help you find blog posts that are more relevant to where you are → Take the Life Transition Self-Assessment.

I look forward to being able to offer more interactive features for you the visitor!

Closing Thoughts

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Here are a few thoughts in closing:

Why Did I Write This Post?

Because I value the journey and potential of AI, I want to help it improve with time. To that end, I’m OK with airing my thoughts and dirty laundry to remind companies of the real struggles (technical or moral) that some of us bloggers – and their customers – are experiencing.

What’s the Priority?

The first things that I hope improve are the AI tells. These inevitably should, especially now that it’s easier to connect more content to AI so it can understand everything about us and our projects.

If AI’s Only Your Editor, Why Care So Much?

The AI tells appear even in conversation with AI – not just suggested content. Having a chat, suggestions, and advice, from a service that shares a similar voice – will help to save time, confusion, context issues, and generally make working alongside AI much more efficient.

Thanks for reading

If this post gets read and found, maybe it will contribute in some small way.