Copywriters & Brand Voice Experts - Anti-AI Literary Counterculture

#journorequest: Seeking insights on the anti-AI literary counterculture There have been countless stories discussing AI-generated copy and all the tells that come with it over the last year or so. Em-dashes have become the most infamous punctuation point, for all the wrong reasons; the “it’s not x, it’s y” sentence structure has had editors tearing their hair out; whenever I see qualifying phrases and rhetorical devices like, “And honestly?”, “quietly becoming…”, “genuinely…”, I immediately switch off and assume (maybe unfairly) that everything preceding or after the tell has also been lazily generated by a chatbot. People have become so conscious of coming across as AI that they’re going to bizarre lengths to prove that there’s a human behind the copy. There are reported cases of people deliberately leaving typos in job applications, professionals sending emails with intentional lower-case subject lines or small grammar slip-ups, dating app users doing the same in their bios and prompts, people signing off messages with “sent from my iPhone” (even if they weren’t). If people are this acutely aware of not sounding like AI in their own communications, you can bet they’re looking out for it in all the media and comms they engage with. There’s research to back up this phenomenon: Boston Consulting Group found that 69% of surveyed bosses prefer job applications with minor mistakes to reassure them that they were written without AI, and anecdotal A/B testing has found that Fortune 500 CEOs tend to open emails with lowercase, misspelt subject lines at a far higher rate. As a writer and editor, this has been on my mind a lot of late. How do you differentiate yourself and find your voice in this current moment without over-correcting? Do people and brands now have to do extra work to prove they've actually authored a piece of work or copy? So, I’m writing a report for insights agency Canvas8 on this very topic, exploring its cultural and commercial implications. If you have branding or advertising expertise (particularly copywriters), are adept at crafting tone of voice for brands or have an interesting insight into the bizarre phenomenon of this anti-AI counter-style, let me know in the comments below or via DM. I’m looking for expert perspectives ASAP to include in my reporting. Thanks! #AI #editorial #copywriting #brandvoice #journalism #branding #toneofvoice #insights