How do you stand out in a crowd of AI slop
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know there’s a groundswell of pushback against ‘AI slop’. Not against AI, against AI SLOP.
That’s the generic, poorly created, poorly curated (or totally un-curated) output that comes from lazy input. And that’s most AI content.
Yep, I said it. Most AI output is vanilla, same same, sounds like everyone else, junk.
I recently helped judge a category in a local business awards.
Now, if you didn’t get up on stage at Saturday’s awards here on the Mid Coast, before you come at me with torches and pitchforks, they’re not the awards I was judging. Not even close. It was a totally different region.
As part of the gig I had the opportunity to read through 20 submissions from local businesses, all responding to the same set of criteria.
Pretty soon they all started to sound pretty much the same. And yes, that’s always going to be a risk when they’re answering the same questions with the same judging criteria, but seriously, this was next level.
Clearly, most of them had clearly been written using AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude. And look, there's nothing wrong with that in itself. If the content is factually correct, AI is actually great at making sure an entry hits every point in the criteria and follows the right structure. That's not the problem.
The problem is that when everyone uses the same tools, in the same way, to answer the same brief, you get 20 versions of the same answer. Same rhythm. Same phrases. Same "safe" way of explaining why their business deserves to win.
We all kind of already know AI content can sound generic. But you don't really feel it until you're reading 20 pieces back to back, and one starts blurring into the next. And the next. I definitely had a little chuckle when I read the exact same phrase for the third time. By the seventh or eighth it was less of a chuckle and more of a 'are you kidding me!’
For the entrants, this made it almost impossible to stand out. I could see they'd put in the work to build genuinely good businesses, but their submission still read like everyone else's. That's a real problem when the whole point of the exercise is to stand out.
So, is AI content actually bad?
No. Not even close. We use it in our business and it’s definitely increased the output of our team. But it's not a magic wand either. Like most tools, it depends entirely on how you use it. Garbage in, garbage out.
The pros:
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It's fast. What used to take hours can take minutes.
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It's structured. Give it clear criteria or a brief, and it'll follow it properly, every time.
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It's a brilliant starting point. Blank page syndrome? Solved.
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It's great for research, outlines, and getting your ideas out of your head and onto the screen.
The cons:
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It sounds like everyone else’s content, because it's trained on everyone else’s content.
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It doesn't know your business, your customers, or what actually makes you different, unless you tell it. And yes, I know you can build custom agents, and projects. We’ll get to that.
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It has no opinions, no war stories, no personality, unless you give it some.
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Used lazily, it produces content that's technically correct and completely forgettable.
And that last point is especially pertinent to the example at hand. These entries were technically solid. Structurally sound. 100% Forgettable. Well, 80%. There were a few really good ones.
So how does this relate to marketing?
Anyone who knows me will tell you it’s a toxic trait that I look at EVERYTHING like a marketer. it's not just award submissions where this happens. It's blogs. Ads. Website copy. Sales emails. Basically anywhere your business puts words in front of a customer.
If you're using AI to bang out your marketing content without adding anything of your own, you're not writing marketing. You're adding to the noise. And your customers are already drowning in it.
Think about what your customers actually scroll past every day. LinkedIn posts that all open with "I used to think X, but then Y." Ads that all promise to "unlock" or "supercharge" something. Website copy that all talks about being "passionate" and "customer-focused" and offering "tailored solutions." None of it's wrong exactly. It's just... beige. Or cream. Or white, off white, bone or ivory. (OK, who’s old enough to get the 12th man reference?)
That's what generic AI content does to your marketing. It doesn't make it bad, it makes it invisible. And invisible is arguably worse than bad, because at least bad gets a reaction.
So what does that mean in the real world?
Campaign performance.
Ads live and die on standing out in the newsfeed. If your headline, your hook, or your offer sounds like the last five ads someone just scrolled past, guess what, they’re scrolling past your ad too. That's an expensive way to run a campaign.
Brand perception.
Your brand is basically the sum of everything you've ever said to a customer. If all of it sounds like it could've come from any other business in your industry, you haven't built a brand, you've built a template. And templates don't earn loyalty, trust, or word of mouth. You’re doing marketing for every other brand that sounds just like you.
ROI.
This is where it really bites. If your content doesn’t stand out, it doesn’t get cut through. If it doesn’t get cut through then it doesn’t get clicks, or calls. That means it doesn’t get leads... or sales. And that sucks! Because then all it does it cost money and NOT generate a good ROI.
The fix isn't to ditch AI in your marketing. It's the same fix as the award entries: use it as the engine, not the voice. Let it draft, structure and speed things up. But make sure what goes out the door still sounds like you, and only you.
How to make your AI content actually stand out
If you don't want to get caught up in the crossfire of push back against AI slop, but you still want to leverage this fast growing and, honestly, awesome tool, you need to make your content stand out.
1. Feed it your voice, not just your brief. Don't just ask it to "write a submission for X” or “Create a detailed blog about Y”. Give it real examples of how you speak and write, actual stories from your business, and your genuine opinions on the topic. The more of you you put in, the less generic it'll be. Link it to blogs on your website that YOU wrote. Not the ones it wrote for you. Give it PDF’s of your marketing collateral, your style guide and your brand personality quizz resutls, if you’ve done one.
2. Add the stuff AI can't make up. Specific numbers and results. Case studies. A moment that went wrong and what you learned from it. A weird detail that only your business would have. This is the stuff that separates a real story from a template.
3. Have an opinion. AI tends to play it safe, because safe is statistically the most common answer. Real, memorable content usually takes a position. Say what you actually think, not what sounds nice. It’s OK to piss people off sometimes. Take stand for what you actually believe.
4. Edit like you mean it. Don't just proofread for typos. Read it out loud. If it doesn't sound like you, or like anyone at all, rewrite the parts that don't or leave them on the cutting room floor. Say it once and say it well.
5. Use it for the boring bits, not the important bits. Let AI handle structure, formatting, and getting a first draft down. Save your energy for the sections that actually need your personality, your story, and your point of view.
The bottom line
AI isn't the problem. Using it as a shortcut to sounding like everyone else is.
Those 20 award entries all had good businesses behind them. Somewhere along the way, the tool they used to tell their story did them dirty, and ended up telling everyone's story the same way.
The ones that stood out to me as a judge weren't necessarily the ones that avoided AI altogether, they were the ones where you could still hear a real person behind the words.
That's the bit no AI tool can do for you. That part's still on you. For now...