Your site's AI-written content is an avocado bathroom suite

Posts titled Perspectives, like this one, reflect the personal views of the writer. Where something in them is Nevado's point of view, we'll identify that explicitly.

For those of us of a certain age (I was born in the 70s) avocado-coloured bathroom suites were a particular fixture (so to speak) of our childhoods. Popular worldwide in the 70s for reasons never discernable to me (but hey, I wasn't a Boomer homeowner), they rapidly declined in new installations from the 80s onwards, but, given the decades-long lifespan of most bathrooms, persisted in existing installations. You could date them, immediately: go to a friend's house, feel the call of nature, a-ha, this bathroom was built in 1972.

In other words, a fashion. I do think maybe the black taps and other bathroom fittings in vogue right now might go the same way, but... let's get out of the bathroom.

By Claude!

AI writing is e v e r y w h e r e. Most freshly-produced written content you read now will have at minimum been edited with AI, and very often entirely written by AI. In case you're wondering, I've not used AI at all in writing this piece, but we do use AI at Nevado because it is a powerful tool with a lot of benefits.

For businesses, AI writing solves a whole class of issues. Most people are not wordsmiths and are not hired to be - they are in their job because they are great at accountancy, or medical diagnoses, or systems integration, or whatever. Putting what they need to say through something which can make it clearer, and quickly, can be a win, especially if it means they can spend more time doing the work they do best.

AI writing can also be useful for marketing copy, thought pieces, email campaigns, targeted messages to someone you really want to convert on LinkedIn. It can adopt the company's tone of voice (and will keep getting better at this). It can spell, and construct its grammar well. It can read through reams of source material and surface useful content. It sometimes writes things that superficially look good, but don't stand up to reasoned interrogation but, hey, so do humans, and... it's only going to get better.

I thought we were talking about avocados?

I hear you wondering about the bath-and-basin set we discussed earlier. By the way, the picture above was AI-generated, but only because I couldn't find a suitable free stock image and didn't want to harvest someone else's image off a Google Images search.

Here's the thing: AI writing is still distinctively identifiable as AI writing, especially if it hasn't been heavily coached. Over the last couple of years, as it has invaded everything, some of its stylistic tics have become well known.

One house style, now for everyone

In 2023, only word-loving nerds like me knew what an em dash was—but now everybody does (and some of them even know why it's called an em dash*). It wasn't that normal for people outside journalists and novelists to deploy the rule of three in all sorts of everyday writing—an email, a push notification, a slide—but now you can't escape it (the rule of three is a writing thing: lists of three are satisfying for human minds because lists of two feel either definitive or not enough, and four is just too many).

Then there's the not-this-that construct. This one isn't a localised disease. It's a pandemic.

AI also has a penchant for certain words (for reasons the guys who make it don't understand, because, don't panic, they don't actually know what goes in the reasoning and choice of words their creations use). Look through your emails, slides and (damn it, I'm not going to rule of three this one) and you will see the word "quietly" everywhere. "The system quietly fails, and nobody notices." It also loves to "delve" into whatever it can.

Over the last few months, I've noticed the usage of short, conversational sentences which aren't technically full sentences. They often start with "that" or "which". That's where we're at. It also currently likes a this-so-that construct, like this one I spotted today on an (admirable) website pressuring for signalling on our local tube line to be fixed: "Log delays, cancellations and overcrowding on the Wimbledon branch — every report builds the evidence for change."

The avocado is ripe until it's not

Because I've been paying attention to these stylistic habits (which definitely don't annoy me, I'm sure you can tell) I've noticed that they have changed over the last couple of years. Have you noticed that the em dashes are starting to thin out? That's not a co-incidence, it's a reaction (the this-not-that is fun once you notice it).

The reason is that the models are constantly changing, and that includes their writing. Maybe the tech bros are burning gazillions of dollars ironing out em dashes. Or maybe it's just a by-product of model evolution.

The reason doesn't really matter, but the impact on you does.

There's a sell-by date. You just don't know what it is

When the new model comes out next Tuesday and starts writing differently, suddenly, all the marketing content you produced over the last six months with the last model immediately looks dated. The print ads you've got up in the tube, the new website you just produced, the vibe-coded app you're running (is he going to go rule of three, or is he going to risk just one more?), the templated emails that go out regularly (he did it!), the considered consulting slide deck your client just forked over fifty grand for (five! No! Surely he must stop now...)

As noted above, most people aren't wordsmiths. But they are very intuitive, and they can all read (for now, until the death of the written word, when life is a nonstop hell of everyone's TikTok feed playing on their phone's speaker), and they can feel when something seems dated, even if they can't tell you why.

Skinny jeans were cool until they weren't.

Forsooth, dost thou maintain that the written word changeth not?

It's not like writing hasn't had trends and styles before: obviously it has. Marketing copy and novels from the 60s read differently from marketing copy and novels from the 80s. People ape each others' styles, consciously and subconsciously. Just ask anyone who ever wrote a LinkedIn humble brag that sounded exactly like... every other LinkedIn humble brag. Right now, some part of my brain is definitely channeling journalist thought piece stuff I've consumed over the years. We humans are mimics (on this note, ask yourself: have you started to write like AI, because you're subtly influenced by what you read these days?)

So, what's the difference?

The key differences between then (the misty, distant world of 2023!) and now are twofold.

One, there used to be more diversity in writing. Different brands had different styles, and every writer would bring something of their own style to their work, even if they were broadly moving with a trend. Every email you received felt a bit different and you could see something of the character of its author or brand in it. Now, there are fewer than ten writers doing most of the writing (hint: they go by the names Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, Grok et al). And when there is less diversity in something, changes are much more noticeable.

Two, human writing trends never moved as fast. By the time the language had moved on in 2005, your marketing blurb from 1995 was long dead anyway. Now, content dates with each new model release every few months (and it'll get faster), and you have zero control over when Claude is going to stop writing like it does right now and start doing it a different way. You're captive to the models.

So, one day you're admiring your shiny new avocado bathroom suite, and the next day it is suddenly looking gross because your neighbour has a white toilet being installed. You're left thinking, 'It looked amazing at the time! How could I not see that it wouldn't stand the test of time?'

What's the fix?

What can you do now to save yourself from looking at your content next year and thinking it looks so 2026?

First, be aware. If you've not really noticed AI writing, see if you can start to spot it. Find it in your organisation, and understand the scope and effort of regularly updating it so it doesn't turn into an avocado-coloured toilet.

Second, talk. Get people's views. How are they reacting to the prevalence of AI writing? Does it bother them, or are they cool with it? Do they even notice it? Form a view as a company rather than just letting everyone run wild with getting Claude to write everything.

Third, think about the importance of voice. The most important bits of writing your company produces will be the ones where your brand values, opinions, taste and character make a material difference to the impact of the writing. This is voice, and voice is about the feely bits. For some kinds of writing, being clear, factually correct and grammatically accurate (AI) doesn't automatically mean a piece of writing is achieving its goals.

Equally, a voice that is compelling but inauthentic to the brand or person who has put their name on it can be a problem too. Are you writing to me earnestly, with the time put in to show I matter, or did you dash off a two-line prompt to ChatGPT and copy and paste it even though it didn't sound like you? Does your Slack post sound like you, or like your robot intern? What does that do to how I process and react to your message? I'm not saying don't use AI to write: I'm just saying think about the person consuming your writing and what is different compared to you (or a trusted copywriter who understands your brand's voice) writing it.

If you'd like to talk to Nevado about how AI is rolling out across your business, get in touch.

I've just heard that...

... green toilets might be coming back into fashion! As well as skinny jeans. Maybe—just maybe—em dashes will feel fine again by January.

Good luck out there, and if any of this resonates and you want to get in touch, feel free to grab me on LinkedIn.

* An em-dash is so named because in whatever font it is you're using, it is the width of that font's lowercase m. There is also a skinnier relative called an en dash, which is the width of the n.