How To Detect and Improve AI-Generated Content

Why It Matters for Brands, SEO, and Audience Trust

As more businesses lean on tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copy.ai to crank out blogs, product pages, and emails, the question isn’t if AI is being used—it's how well. 

The rise of AI-generated content for SEO has brought incredible efficiencies, but it’s also raised concerns about quality, trust, and search performance. If your content reads like a robot wrote it, you could be missing the mark with both Google and your audience.

Risks of Publishing Unedited AI Content

AI-written content, while convenient, often lacks depth, originality, and emotional nuance. When left unedited, it can:

• Misrepresent your brand voice
• Sound repetitive or generic
• Include outdated or incorrect info
• Hurt trust with readers
• Lead to poor SEO performance

Google may not outright ban AI content, but it does penalize thin or low-value pages that don’t serve users well.

Maintaining Content Integrity and Authenticity

To keep your content authentic, you must ensure it reflects your brand personality, provides real value, and is tailored to your audience. That often requires more than a quick AI prompt. You need real humans to review, fact-check, personalize, and polish the output. In short: AI can draft. Humans should direct.

Tools and Techniques for Detection

How do you know if a piece of content was generated by AI? 

Whether you're reviewing copy from a freelance writer, a content tool, or your own internal team, there are clear signals that something’s... a little too robotic.

Top Detection Tools

Here are some solid options to help detect AI-generated content:

• Originality.AI – Designed for SEO and web publishers; scores content based on AI likelihood and plagiarism.
• GPTZero – Built for educators but works well for web copy; identifies AI patterns in sentence structure and tone.
• Writer.com’s AI Content Detector – Free, simple, and great for quick checks.
• Copyleaks – Combines AI detection with plagiarism checking—useful for marketing teams.

While no AI detection tool is 100% accurate, they help flag content that might need closer scrutiny.

Analyzing Repetitive Writing Patterns

AI tends to loop on phrasing and ideas. You might see sentences like:

“AI tools are powerful. These tools can help. Using AI tools will improve your content.”

Spot that repetition? That’s a giveaway. Real human writers vary sentence length, switch up word choice, and dig deeper into context.

Identifying Formulaic Sentence Structures

Many AI outputs stick to a predictable format: statement > explanation > reiteration. If every paragraph feels like it came off a conveyor belt, it probably did.

To break that mold, rearrange ideas, inject personality, and use transition words that feel more natural.

Recognizing Excessive Use of AI-Typical Words and Verbiage

AI loves certain words that sound flashy but say very little. Terms like unlock, transform, journey, and cutting-edge pop up way too often, making your content feel more like it was written by a bot than someone who truly understands your audience. If your copy sounds like a corporate jargon machine, consider humanizing your AI content.

Our team put together a practical guide on how to make AI content sound human, authentic, conversational, and on-brand. Learn how to humanize your copy here!

Limitations of AI Detection Software

AI detection tools are becoming more sophisticated, but they’re far from foolproof. Many marketers assume these tools can give them a quick green light or red flag, but the reality is more nuanced. Here's where most detection tools fall short:

• Mixed AI/Human Content: When humans lightly revise AI-generated content, detection tools often struggle to identify which parts are machine-written.
• Lightly Edited AI Drafts: Even small edits—like rearranging sentences or tweaking phrasing—can make AI content appear human to detection software.
• Long-Form Content with Variable Tone: Detection tools have a hard time analyzing longer pieces that shift between different tones or styles, often resulting in inconsistent or inaccurate results.

Because of these blind spots, detection tools should be just one part of your quality control process — not the final decision-maker. A skilled editor brings something software can't: intuition, context, and the ability to sense whether the content truly aligns with your brand and audience.

Ensuring Compliance with Google’s Search Guidelines

Google doesn’t care if your content is written by a human or a bot, as long as it’s helpful. But here’s the catch: AI content often doesn’t meet Google’s expectations for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

Google’s Stance on AI Content and E-E-A-T

According to Google’s guidance, AI-generated content isn't inherently bad for SEO — if it provides value. That means it must:

• Be accurate
• Be original
• Demonstrate real expertise
• Match the intent of the search query

Otherwise, it risks being filtered out as spammy or low-quality.

Why Human Oversight Is Still Crucial

AI is great at generating quick drafts, but it lacks the intuition to understand context and audience expectations. And when you skip human review, your content may miss the emotional depth, brand personality, and relevance that resonate with real readers. 

In fact, a 2024 survey found that 71% of marketers reported improved engagement and SEO performance when AI-generated content was edited by a human compared to publishing AI output as-is.

A skilled content editor can:

• Spot nuance AI might miss
• Fine-tune brand tone
• Check for accuracy and voice alignment
• Remove fluff and jargon

That’s why ZGM’s content team combines AI and human editing in our workflow to get the best of both speed and quality.

Preparing for AI Content Audits

Audits help uncover low-quality or overly generic copy that may slip through the cracks. They're also a great way to identify content that needs refinement to align with brand tone, current SEO practices, or Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines.

Start by running your existing content — especially key landing pages and blogs — through reliable AI detection tools and SEO checkers. These tools can flag areas of concern, but they’re just the first step. From there, build a human-led review process using a simple but effective checklist:

• Does this page offer real value, or is it just repeating surface-level ideas?
• Is the information accurate, current, and supported by credible sources?
• Would a human actually want to read and engage with this page, or does it feel robotic or flat?

If you find yourself answering “meh” to any of these questions, that’s a clear sign the content could benefit from editing—or possibly even a rewrite. Regular AI content audits ensure your published work stays sharp, credible, and genuinely helpful to your readers and search engines.

The Role of High-Quality and Authentic Content

Search engines reward content that helps people. That means clear, honest writing, strong ideas, and a voice readers can connect with.

Brand Voice and Personalization

AI can write a blog, but it can’t write your blog. It doesn’t know your brand’s story, your customer’s pain points, or the tone that resonates best with your audience. That’s why it's essential to add real-life examples from your company, insights from your internal team, and messaging that reflects what your audience actually cares about.

Personalization is what turns generic copy into meaningful, high-performing AI content.

Fact-Checking and Citing Reliable Sources

AI can hallucinate. Always verify stats, claims, and quotes. Link out to high-quality sources. Not only does this build trust, but it can also help with Search Engine Optimization and content authority. 

Citing credible data shows readers and search engines that your content is reliable and well-researched. It also helps prevent the spread of misinformation—something that can quickly damage your brand’s credibility if left unchecked.

Optimizing for SEO and Readability

Even the best-written content won’t perform if it’s hard to scan or lacks structure. To make sure your content is both user-friendly and search-friendly, keep these key elements in mind:

• Clear H1s and H2s
• Bullet points
• Short paragraphs
• Internal and external links
• Focus keywords like “how to detect AI content” and “AI content for SEO”

Potential Risks of Relying on AI Content

Poor User Engagement and Dwell Time

If users bounce quickly, Google notices. AI-generated content that's dull or confusing leads to low dwell time and reduced visibility in search.

Inconsistent Tone and Voice

Even the best AI content writer for SEO can’t consistently match your company’s tone without human input. A disjointed voice turns off readers fast.

Possible Search Engine Penalties

While Google doesn’t penalize “AI content” per se, it does penalize:

• Spammy writing
• Thin pages
• Auto-generated fluff without oversight

So yes, AI content can be harmful for SEO — if you don’t clean it up.

Balancing AI Tools with Human Creativity

Editorial Workflows for Reviewing AI Content

To get the most out of AI tools without sacrificing quality, it's important to build a clear editorial process that blends efficiency with oversight. This ensures every piece of content meets your brand’s standards before it goes live.

1. Draft – Let AI do the initial heavy lifting
2. Review – Have a content strategist check for tone, accuracy, and structure
3. Edit AI Content– Human editor polishes, optimizes for SEO, and fact-checks
4. Approve – Final review by a brand or marketing lead
5. Publish – Done!

Boost Content Performance with AI + Human Strategy—Here’s How

AI can give you a strong draft, fast. But humans shape that draft into something useful, engaging, and strategic. By integrating AI into a thoughtful content marketing strategy, you can reduce production time while still producing work aligned with your brand and built to perform in search. The real magic happens when AI supports, not replaces, human insight.

Want to see how we blend both? ZGM’s AI SEO and content marketing services are designed to help marketing teams scale smarter. Learn more about our team and how we can help you create better, faster, and more strategic content with the perfect balance of automation and human touch.

FAQs About AI Content Detection and Improvement