Hey Reader,

Search for AI tips on YouTube and you’ll get a dozen or more thumbnails promising you 10 to 12 “easy” steps to make your content creation effortless with AI.

No wonder that inside the HeyCreator community, we hear comments like this all the time:

Some creators (like me) enjoy using AI. Others are skeptical. Most are somewhere in the middle—interested, but unsure how to make it work without sounding like a sales robot.

The secret lies in how you interact with it. Approaching AI tools as if you feed in your dollar bill, punch a button, and expect your favorite snack is almost sure to disappoint. AI isn’t a vending machine.

To prevent this, I have a helpful tip that might sound weird to you… it helps to converse with artificial intelligence as if it were human.

Tell the AI about your audience and what makes them tick. Think of it as a writing partner rather than a content factory. What I usually do is turn on voice mode and just talk to the AI like I would explain something to a person over coffee.

How to Get AI to Sound More Like You—and Less Like a Bot

When I was running my content agency, our team at Automatic Evergreen wrote hundreds of newsletters for clients—turning their podcasts, YouTube videos, and interviews into consistent, high-performing content.

Here’s what we learned: it usually took 6-8 emails before we could really capture a client’s voice.

Until then, we had to do the deep work—studying how they talked, pulling stories from their content, and shaping prompts that made sense for them.

AI helped—but only after we learned how to guide it well.

The shift that changed everything?

We stopped treating AI like a vending machine. And started treating it like a creative partner.

Here are three things that helped make AI a more useful part of the process:

Thing 1: Set Clear Boundaries Around Tone

Start every prompt with a clear instruction like:

Avoid salesy, overhyped language. Don’t use phrases like:

• Game-changer
• Supercharge
• Unlock your potential
• Secret weapon
• Transform
• Next-level
• Life-changing

Just naming what to avoid can help steer the draft in a clearer, more grounded direction. (It helps to ban emojis, too.)

Thing 2: Start With a Real Story or Example

The best AI outputs start with real inputs.

Instead of using a complicated prompt, just explain the idea as if you were talking to a teammate. Context matters—and stories help.

Example:

That kind of input gives AI tone, direction, and something to build from. It sounds like something you’d actually say.

Thing 3: Use Better Prompts That Focus on Emotion and Outcome

If you want AI to help shape a useful draft, lead with how it should feel or what it should do for the reader:

• “This piece should make the reader feel: ___.” (Calm? Focused? Motivated?)
• “At the end, I want them to say: [insert your desired outcome]. Help me reverse engineer this.”
• “Give me a version of this idea that sounds like I’m talking to a small group of friends—not a big audience.”

These prompts won’t just generate cleaner copy—they’ll help you clarify your thinking. That’s been one of the most useful parts of using AI in my own workflow.

And yes, it’s what I’d call a game-changer. (Even if AI has made that term a little harder to use these days.)

AI Isn’t the Writer. You Are.

AI can absolutely help you clarify ideas and move faster. But only if you give it something real to work with.

The best content doesn’t come from the prompt. It comes from the way you talk about your own experience.

Start there—and shape it from the inside out.

Matt Ragland

P.S. Struggling to make AI sound more human? Hit reply and tell me what's not working. I’m collecting real stories about AI writing challenges (and what actually helps).