The Simplest Way to Get AI to Write Like You

Man Bites Dog I guardianmarketing.substack.com

One of the most common perspectives I see with AI - not typically overtly talked about, but which comes out in the perspectives, behaviors, assumptions, frustrations, and outcomes of people who use AI - is that it can and should be able to just write for YOU. Write like you, as you, etc.

And yet when people approach AI with this belief, that it should be meeting your own internal expectations, they easily become disappointed and quickly give up.

It is indeed quite possible to get AI to the place where it is creating content just as well as you would,

But most people are missing a key component of this puzzle.

The Human in the AI

AI - large language models - is (roughly speaking) a system that is trained on a very vast set of written and spoken language.

I'm not a technical expert on these systems. But I don't need to be one in order to get what I need from AI.

When I think about "AI" in general, I find it useful to think about it not like it’s a specific writer that can write for me, but rather as a VERY broad collection of every writer it has ever synthesized.

This means,

AI in a very rough sense is an average perspective of every writer that it has ever seen. It doesn't matter if you tell it "act like an expert copywriter" or "act like an expert playwrite." That will help it focus to a subset of writings which it thinks fits that role, but you'll still end up with an average "expert copywriter" and an average "expert playwrite." You can follow that rabbit hole down and keep coming to an average.

For most people who try to implement AI, in my observation, this ends up butting up against an expectation set by individual writers of skill, which they may very well have used in the past, or may very well be themselves.

That expectation is rooted in the uniqueness of the human.

Which the AI is not.

So when people get into AI and start trying to have it write for them, it is often the experience that the outcome is ... shall we say ... lacking.

Let's take copywriting as the example, since this is Man Bites Dog - you can expand this to just "marketing" (and any other environment where you'd be writing) - but semantics aside, we're writing words to ultimately sell stuff.

This can be an excellent role for AI because of the measured and scientific aspects of writing marketing copy.

But

When I come in as a human copywriter, you don't just get the measured scientific aspects of writing marketing copy. You also get my perspective and understanding, my experience, style, and approach with writing which ultimately creates a particular experience and outcome for the prospect/customer/etc.

You can replace a copywriter with AI, but you can't expect to replace a human with AI.

(Did I just call all copywriters in-human? 🤣)

This is certainly a controversial position amongst some, but based on my own experience using AI, it's inevitable that the technician roles of writing - especially for marketing of a business - are going to be entirely taken by these systems.

Yet, there is and always will be a need for humanity ... it's simply that the role that humanity takes charge of is changing.

For most businesses out there, even if they can only get the AI 80% as "good" as the human writer, the iterative speed of the machine far out-values the last 20%.

But lets bring it back to the point ...

Getting the AI to write like a specific person

If you want AI to write like someone ... you have to effectively put that person into the machine.

Recall that AI, broadly, is a massive range of writers all conglomerated together in a database that it references. You can tell it to focus on particular styles and techniques, but it's still going to hit an average.

So,

The answer is to go to the other extreme. Show it exactly the human it is writing as, how that human writes, even how that human thinks if possible.

You a writer reading this and think this is kind of gross? (I’ve certainly had that thought)

Well,

1. This is the path the world is on. AI is moving so fast we can't really see how overwhelmingly prevalent it already is, nor how extensively our roles are going to shift because of it.

2. You might be surprised to realize that a LOT of your writing can be synthesized into principles, techniques, style, voice, and other systemically replicable patterns. (And AI is shockingly good at look at your writing and learning to write like you in the blink of an eye)

3. Once you start doing this it lifts a huge consistent mental load and allows you a larger capacity for greater things. You won’t be lessened by this, you’ll be empowered (or you’re writers will, if you give them the opportunity to level up).

My personal principled approach to AI has always been to primarily use AI in process based applications. When I'm writing emails for a client, there's a replicable process. A landing page - replicable process. Social Media ads and posts ... you get the point.

If I can explain to someone else exactly how to write the way I do, I can explain to the AI the same, and quickly get at least 80% of the way there at the push of a button.

This is all something I demonstrate in AI Email Masters¹ - while focused on email copywriting, the principles apply across the board as a writer using AI.

Even though I put that program together a year ago, those principles are still relevant (which is a bold statement for something in the AI space). What HAS changed are the effectiveness of the tools and the quality and consistency of outputs in the typical AI chatbots.

It's easier than ever now to effectively put your own humanity into the AI - at least up to a point. You could have an AI program that "thinks" and writes just like I do. Creating 80-90% outputs of what I would make in a shockingly short amount of time.

As I write this, I am building out a full suite of "ME the copywriter" to not only write like I do, but critique, edit, AND strategize (as far as technician would) all based on my known and measurable principles and the processes and techniques I've developed and come to over the years.

What's made this more possible now, are some simple technical details of the typical chat bots - in this case I almost always use chatGPT (paid), but you can do the same in any chat bot program that uses "projects" or "custom gpts" or "bots."

How to put The Human in the AI - and elevate the roles of your writers

There's balance between process and human intuitiveness - I often write on intuition, but that doesn't mean I can't teach someone else how to write like me, especially when it's for writing like marketing, where there's a clear defined goal/outcome, sets of frameworks, etc. And that ultimately is what is necessary in order to put the human into the AI.

(There's an advanced perspective on this I'm exploring using explore/exploit to identify the writing I should be doing myself, and the writing most appropriate for AI - but that's another topic)

Here's the simple process for replicating yourself as a writer, or another writer:

Identify all the processes, steps, thoughts, techniques you go through when writing, and write about those processes like you are explaining to someone else how to do what you do - put the explanation of how you write in a text file. This actually doesn’t need to be comprehensive - once you get a starting point you can work back and forth with the AI to refine things.

Identify good examples of your writing which used those processes, placed in text files.

In Chat GPT you can do the following steps either in a custom GPT or in a "project." I find the project easier to work with and modify, especially if I'm wanting to customize unique project based aspects of the writing - like for a particular business or product or voice - whereas I create GPTs for overall repeated complex processes (I have a custom GPT for creating customer avatars, for example).

Take all the examples of your writing, and upload those as text files to the project files.

Take your explanation of how you write and upload it as a text file.

Next, start a chat in that project and just talk to the GPT "I've uploaded several examples of my writing as text files, and an explanation of my writing in filename.txt - I want you to read through my explanation of how I write, analyze all of my writing examples, and become an expert at writing as me."

Then, start asking it to write. I personally would have it replicate work similar to the examples - so if I uploaded emails, I’d ask it to write an email based on a specific idea and then go from there.

You will most likely need to go through iterations, but each time it writes, talk to it like a person.

I've found that in the past year, GPT especially has become very consistent at editing written content. If I tell it I don't like a particular line, or a transition, or a way it has talked about something, it will make changes only to the relevant parts of a written piece in order to fit my requests.

From this point, the AI experience is up to you.

Talk to it like another writer.

Ask it to justify what it's doing.

Ask it for recommendations on how to improve.

Provide new insight, examples/references as you come to them.

I've found it does a very good job of taking audio transcripts of conversations and turning those into like-sounding writing. Teach it to write copy in a particular style/technique. Teach it to critique, edit, and constantly improve itself.

If you are a studious learner - someone who consciously goes through the learning process, engages the field, changes behavior to grow - I believe you'll find as a writer that being able to spend a lot more time and energy thinking through and writing on higher level problems vastly increases your value and the end result of your writing (even when it seems like AI is doing the heavy lifting).

Systematizing the aspects of your work which are uniquely you means all that time/energy can go to other use - it's not about replacing you the person, it's actually about giving yourself (or your writer) time to do the things best done by real people (applying real life experience, thinking and interpreting outside of the box). And it turns out, writing marketing assets is not that. It only has been for all of existence thus far out of necessity.

If you want to go deeper on the principles backing all this, AI Email Masters is available to paid MBD+ subscribers. I talk through my principled approach to AI (which hasn't changed), and demonstrate some straightforward consistent processes for creating email-related marketing assets (though there's no reason you can't use the exact same processes for any other marketing assets). It's not a set of prompts, it's a collection of guiding principles to help you think and make choices effectively to get the outcomes you need from Ai.

Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.

Joseph Robertson, CMO Man Bites Dog

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