“Is This AI?” How To Spot When Ai Is Used In Marketing
As someone who is notoriously and chronically online due to my work responsibilities (and because I enjoy watching funny videos of cats on TikTok). I see a lot of content across all platforms. As I’m not alone in this, there’s more pressure on social media managers & businesses now more than ever to churn out content quickly to make sure your brand is being seen by the right people. This is where the likes of AI comes into play.
Don’t get me wrong, I love using AI in my day to day work, often enough I will write a bit of copy for Instagram & want to alter it to suit other platforms, and to ensure I don’t end up interfering with the original message; by using AI like Claude and asking ‘take this copy and make it suitable for LinkedIn’ is very handy.
As someone who uses AI as an assistant, I can see many other marketers use it more ineptly, and not realise they’re negatively impacting their business strategy.
Ever since the whole Glasgow Willy Wonka 'Chocolate Experience' happened, many have become a little more switched on with the likes of clocking the use of AI in advertising and marketing. But as AI improves every day, it sometimes can be vastly difficult to understand what is real and what was… well.. a robot.
If you have ever gotten the ‘uncanny valley’ feeling when you see a brand image or copy across the web? That probably means you’ve seen the works of AI.
Relying on AI in marketing can’t be that bad, right?
One of the key areas of being a marketer is being that bridge between the customer and the business.
As a marketer, you learn who your ideal customer is, what their needs and wants are, you then take this vital information and create content that will stop them in their tracks and think ‘YES! this is what I’m looking for!’ (in an ideal world'), that nurturing element of this role is important, and outsourcing this to an AI who will be the first thing that a prospect will see from your business - is a recipe for disaster.
I will admit, when AI first became accessible and while I was getting used to the companies tone and voice, I relied on AI heavily - to the point now that when I look back on older work I just cringe as it feels that what I’ve written (well.. what AI has) simply feels empty. On days where I am a bit overwhelmed and just need to get a post out I will use AI to take the information and create copy - and I will use it as a base to add my own voice in.
The reason I wanted to write this post was due to coming across a post on LinkedIn, this person had recently changed roles and has moved into more of a ‘PR’ position.
Like many of us who have to do a lot of writing within their jobs, it’s required to showcase examples of your work (hence why I have this blog to begin with). Whenever you’re looking to further your career, or gain CPD from accredited companies and you need to prove you understand the information you’ve been given (this blog post is a good example of that), and sharing posts on LinkedIn or on a blog is a great way to do this.
Upon reading the post she had shared, immediately I said ‘this is AI’ - their tone of voice wasn’t like the voice I knew from their previous writings, and the way the post was structured had such telltale signs that they had copied and pasted from an AI chat bot after providing it some context - the overuse of emoji’s as bullet points, and the way it didn’t have any emotion other than cliches.
So I copied the post and asked AI what they thought:
I then wondered ‘did anyone else clock this?’ and how much bigger does this go when it comes to using AI within the marketing world.
Here’s some tips on how to spot when AI is used in marketing, and how to travel through the scope of lazy campaigns.
There’s a few telltale signs that the copy you’ve read wasn’t written by a human:
AI Has no soul - a big tell that something was written by AI is due to the fact that the copy isn’t emotional, we are beings that have feelings and if we come across something that should naturally have a bit of emotion to it (and it doesn’t) can feel a bit uncanny valley. Even though AI has been trained to speak like humans - remember that not every human (or those in your target audience) talk like this.
AI LOVES MAKING AN ANNOUNCEMENT! - if you’ve ever read ‘📣 attention all [insert niche] enthusiasts’ at the start of a companies promotion, there’s a high chance it’s AI.
Repetitive - AI algorithms may repeat similar sentence structures, phrases, or transitional words throughout the copy, I believe it’s due to the way it was modelled and how a lot of copy written (mostly long-form) likes to reiterate and summarise at the end, but AI doesn’t understand that and thinks it’s normal to repeat phrases.
AI has buzzwords - You’ll notice this if you are someone who uses AI often, there’s words it absolutely LOVES to add in to every single piece of copy, if you’re wanting to promote an experience - expect to see the word ‘transformative’ rock up multiple times, asked AI to write you a Shakespearean sonnet? It’ll work out a way to cram in the phrase ‘like a woven tapestry’ at least once.
USA! USA! USA! 🇺🇸 - This might only be an issue with the AI’s I’ve used, but no matter how many times you ask it to write in UK english going forward, it will automatically default back to US english. This is quite a tell that it’s by AI if you’re reading social copy for a British organisation and it has the words ‘flavor’ or ‘organize’ within the post.
Repetitive - AI algorithms may repeat similar sentence structures, phrases, or transitional words throughout the copy, I believe it’s due to the way it was modelled and how a lot of copy written (mostly long-form) likes to reiterate and summarise at the end, but Ai doesn’t understand that and thinks it’s normal to repeat phrases. (I couldn’t help myself…)
AI struggles to do an exact number of words - I have stopped using AI to convert copy suitable for Twitter/X - as even though you can shout at it ‘MAX 280 CHARACTERS’ it’ll still end up going over.
What about images?
I don’t have a facebook (other than dummy ones to connect to business accounts) but I know that AI images are everywhere on Facebook, and on a lot of other platforms. Here’s some things to look out for when you see an image that’s looking a bit too unreal:
AI can’t do fingers or toes - this was something thats very paramount & that I feel many people have clocked on to already, even the highest spec Ai tools such as Adobe Firefly still trips up on this.
Below is four images generated via Canva, the only prompt I gave was ‘a hand’
Creepy, right? the top left one is the most realistic but look at how wiggly they are, and that Each finger has an extra ‘phalange’ (fingers have 3 phalanges (the distal, middle, and proximal) - (yes I googled the terms)
Everythings so blurrryyyy - If you look close enough in a photo you suspect is AI, you’ll see some weird textures, including random bouts of blurriness that you typically wouldn’t see in a real or partially edited photo, at a glance you probably wouldn’t notice it.
Gibberish - if you’re using Generative expand or wanting to add some text into your image, AI struggles to create words - it either is nonsensical or mismatched.
Below is an image I generated via Photoshop - the prompt was simply ‘hello’
Ready to put your new AI detector skills to the test?
Below is a mock up I have made, one is a real photo with copy I have written, the other is an AI image and AI copy - can you tell which one is real?
The one of the left is an image from Google and copy I quickly mocked up, right is an AI Generated image from Photoshop and the copy was from Claude, the prompts were:
Image: ‘a french wheel of cheese’
Copy: ‘Can you write me some social copy to go on an instagram post promoting a new french cheese’ - of course if I had provided Claude with more information such as brand, tasting notes and freebies the copy would’ve been developed further.
Overall, the key is that AI should be a tool to augment human marketers' capabilities, not an excuse to put marketing on autopilot.
Customers still crave authentic, personalised, and meaningful interactions with brands. When used strategically, AI can help free up a marketers' time for higher-impact work - but it can't replace the creativity, empathy, and relationship-building that are essential for effective marketing.
But, remember - if you’re not sure if something was written by AI, just ask the bot themselves.
Sites referenced:
Claude: https://www.anthropic.com / https://claude.ai
Adobe Firefly: https://www.adobe.com/products/firefly.html
Canva: https://www.canva.com
