Guides / Writing
How we stop AI scripts from sounding like AI
You can usually tell. "In today's fast-paced world." "Let's dive in." A list of three things, then another list of three things. Every sentence the same length, every paragraph wrapping up with a lesson.
Viewers can tell too. And a script that sounds like ChatGPT makes you sound like ChatGPT, on camera, in your own voice. So we taught Cuely's Writing Agent to look for those signs in its own draft and rewrite them before you see it.
What gives AI away
We did not guess. Researchers have measured this:
- Certain words show up far more than people use them. A study of 15 million PubMed abstracts found words like "delves", "showcasing" and "underscores" jumped after ChatGPT came out (Kobak et al., Science Advances, 2025).
- The sentence shapes are different. AI models tack "-ing" clauses onto the end of a sentence ("..., helping you grow") two to five times as often as people do, and write in a denser, noun-heavy way (Reinhart et al., PNAS, 2025).
- People who use AI a lot spot it fast, and the main thing they notice is vocabulary, then sentence structure (Russell et al., ACL, 2025).
What Cuely checks for
After the agent writes a draft, it runs a check that finds:
- AI words and phrases in English and Ukrainian: delve, unlock, seamless, journey, game-changer, "let's dive in", "in today's world", "варто зазначити".
- Long dashes, the punctuation mark that has become a giveaway.
- "-ing" tails at the end of sentences.
- "It's not X, it's Y" on repeat.
- Lists of three as a habit. One is fine. Three in a script is a pattern.
- Flat rhythm: sentences that are all about the same length. People speak in a mix of short lines and longer ones.
The check points to the exact lines, and the agent rewrites only those. It does not throw away your whole script to fix four sentences.
The rules it writes by
Before any of that, the agent writes with rules that push it toward how people talk on camera:
- Plain words and contractions. Fragments are fine.
- A short line. Then a longer one that carries the detail.
- Concrete details over big claims: a name, a place, what you actually saw.
- First person. It is fine to say you do not know something.
- No big wrap-up at the end. End on something specific.
Before: "In today's fast-paced world, consistency is crucial for unlocking growth on your journey." After: "I posted every day for a month. Week two, I almost quit."
What is next
Rules and checks get a script to sound like a person. The next step is to make it sound like you: reading the transcripts of your own videos, so the agent picks up how you open, the words you use and whether you joke. That is what we are building now.
Questions
Will this get past AI detectors?
We do not build for detectors, we build for viewers. Detectors are often wrong. What we measure is how many AI signs a script has per 1000 words, and we are testing with real creators next.
Does it work in Ukrainian?
Yes. The check has its own list of Ukrainian phrases, and the agent writes in the language of your script.