I can usually spot AI-generated content within three seconds.
It’s too polished. Too clean. Too safe.
It sounds like something no one would ever actually say if they cared about the point they were making.
As a former business journalist turned PR consultant, I’ve watched this creep in fast. By late 2024, over half of new web articles were being generated primarily by AI. Not assisted by it. Generated by it.
The result?
The internet is drowning in what I call the sea of slop.
The real problem isn’t AI
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: SMEs were sanding themselves down long before ChatGPT arrived.
They try so hard to sound “professional” that they remove anything remotely interesting. The opinion. The edge. The human friction.
What’s left is content that sounds fine but says nothing.
The pieces that actually land are always different. They sound like something you’d say in a pub or a café — not in a boardroom trying to impress people who aren’t reading it anyway.
That’s the difference between content people skim and content people stop for.
What journalists actually notice
Tech journalists have been blunt about this. AI copy, they say, reads like a “2.2 undergraduate essay.”
Not terrible. Not great. Just… there.
When journalists tell me a piece was “refreshing”, it’s never because it was perfectly structured or beautifully optimised.
It’s because it had a point of view.
And that word — refreshing — tells you how rare that’s become.
The danger nobody talks about
Most SMEs are terrified of being Marmite. Of saying the wrong thing. Of putting a foot wrong.
But in nearly two decades, I’ve rarely seen a business suffer real damage from having a strong, non-political opinion.
The real risk isn’t backlash.
It’s invisibility.
And AI has just made that invisibility faster and cheaper to achieve.
Your 2026 resolution
So if you’re setting content goals this year, forget “more posts”.
Your resolution should be simpler and harder:
Stop trying to sound impressive. Start sounding like yourself.
Not “authentic” in a fluffy marketing sense.
Authentic in the journalists-can’t-find-this-
That’s how you break through the noise in 2026.
My Subscriber version goes deeper into how to do this and what I actually ask clients when their content sounds like everyone else’s.