AI writing can make our tasks so easy, and output content subtly nonsensical at the same time. A cover letter that hits all the key words, but doesn't describe the person writing it. A complete resume with four bullet points per role, but has nothing to do with what the candidate actually did. A presentation with five "clear" sections, but those sections aren't needed to make the point. AI makes creating text easy, not necessarily good.

Where this actually shows up with clients

Even if you're not comfortable with English, or think you're bad at presentations, AI writing can still be worse. I see this most with clients who use AI to write their presentation scripts and build their slides without careful prompting.

When I review these together with my clients, I always end up with the same questions. What does this word mean in this context? Why did you use this phrasing instead of something more concrete? What point is this sentence trying to make for your idea?

And often, my client cannot answer. They don't know why the sentence is there because they didn't have a clear point in mind. They don't know why they chose that word because they didn't have a preference for how to introduce a concept. The result is a presentation full of vague, abstract ideas that go in multiple directions at once, real sentences that go nowhere.

None of this means the client did anything wrong by trying AI first. It usually means the AI was asked to do a job it was never going to be able to do: decide what the point actually was. That decision was always going to have to come from the person standing in front of the audience, not the tool that helped format the sentences around it.

The attempt matters more than the polish

Here's the part I want people to actually hear: even if you think you're terrible at storytelling, or your English isn't perfect, it's the attempt to communicate one key idea that leads to a clear argument the speaker can actually understand. A rougher sentence you fully understand beats a polished one you can't explain.

I've sat across from clients who apologized for their grammar right before saying the clearest, most specific sentence in the entire meeting. Nobody remembered the small grammar slip. Everyone remembered the point.

What I mean when I say AI doesn't generate your thinking

AI generates grammatical sentences. It doesn't generate your thinking. That's the actual gap. Grammar was never the hard part of communicating well. Having a point, and knowing why you chose the words you used to make it, was always the hard part, and that's exactly the part AI can't do for you.

So if you're prompting, at least prompt intentionally and specifically. That's a small discipline, not a big one. Read back what the AI gave you and ask yourself the same three questions I ask my clients. It takes two extra minutes and saves you from presenting a sentence you'd struggle to defend if someone asked you to explain it on the spot.

What's the most AI sentence you've ever heard?