March 31, 2025

AI wrote it. Now what? How to edit AI copy (and why you need a human editor)

Leigh Ebrom · 7 minute read

You asked a generative AI tool to write a blog post for your firm or practice’s website. In seconds, it delivered a clean, confident draft. It’s grammatically correct. The formatting is fine. The tone is neutral but passable. And you think, “This might actually work!”

It’s tempting to hit “publish.” But that would be a mistake. A human needs to edit your AI copy.

In highly regulated industries like legal, healthcare, and financial services, a decent-looking first draft can create a false sense of security. But AI doesn’t worry about compliance standards, your brand nuance, or your clients’ needs. It doesn’t know what NOT to say. And it certainly doesn’t know what your content is for.

AI-generated content is a tool. It can help you move faster, ideate at scale, and overcome blank-page syndrome. I used AI while writing this article. But it’s not a solution on its own. Content’s real power—authority and trust building, lead nurturing, and strategic alignment—comes from you. The real work happens before and after the first draft. Here’s how to edit AI copy.

Before the prompt: Start with strategy

If you’re treating AI like a copy-and-paste solution, you’re missing a huge strategic opportunity. Your content should serve a purpose. Let’s work with a specific example.

I asked ChatGPT to write a personal injury blog about traumatic brain injuries and motorcycle crashes. I kept my prompt as general I as I could. The AI popped out 583 words of copy. It was decent. Pretty generic, but decent. I was pleased to see that the CDC statistic it cited was real.

But, I would never publish that content. First of all, it wouldn’t rank in the top 10 on Google. Not in a million years. Second, even if a legal consumer found the content, it wouldn’t inspire much trust, express the firm’s brand, or push them along their buyer’s journey. It was content for content’s sake.

Sure, generic content might work sometimes. But Google’s algorithms are becoming more selective. And consumers’ search habits are changing. It makes sense to build a thoughtful content strategy before building your AI prompt.

So, I went back to the drawing board. I answered the following questions:

Who am I trying to reach with this content?
What do I want them to do once they’re on the page?
What unique value does the firm offer to this consumer?
Are there any specific elements that I need to add to reflect the firm’s brand, voice, and tone?
Is there an attainable keyword that I should target?
What should this content look like (word count, formatting, etc.)

I gave ChatGPT a lot more information: a specific goal for the content, a target audience, insight into the brand’s voice and tone, information about the content’s ideal structure, additional content to reference and link to, a primary keyword, and more. I got about double the copy, more detail, and clearer calls to action. It still wasn’t perfect, but I had a much better first draft.

When you skip the human-centered steps, you lose the chance to steer that content toward those goals. You get a post—but not a plan. As you create prompts, ask yourself the questions above. Be disciplined and strategic. And if you need help building a prompt framework, shoot me an email at leigh@lafleur.marketing. I’d love to help.

Compliance and fact-checking are the bare minimum

Yes, your AI-generated content needs to be checked for accuracy and compliance. Especially in regulated industries, this means:

Fact-checking every data point, claim, or citation
Scrubbing language that could be construed as misleading or as a guarantee
Making sure you’re not accidentally disclosing protected or confidential information

But risk management alone doesn’t make content valuable. It just makes it safe.

A safety-only mindset can stifle connection. Audiences don’t respond to safe. They respond to relevance, clarity, and utility. A content strategy built only on what you can’t say will always fall short of what you should say to build trust.

Voice, tone, and the human part of professionalism

One of the most overlooked aspects of AI-generated content is voice. AI tends to default to a neutral, semi-academic tone that isn’t offensive—but also isn’t memorable. That’s a problem, especially for firms that want to build trust and credibility in sensitive spaces.

In highly regulated industries, consumers are used to being talked at—and this is exactly what AI will do. But, what people really want is human connection. Your clients don’t just hire a law firm, a financial advisor, or a neurologist. They hire people they trust. Voice is how that trust is conveyed. It’s how you say, “We’ve seen this before. We understand what you’re going through. We can answer your questions. And, most importantly, we’ve got your back.”

Voice and tone are also where your values show up—subtly, but unmistakably. Are you compassionate? Authoritative? Relatable? Strategic? Your voice answers these questions before your audience even finishes reading.

At the end of the day, your tone and voice are more than aesthetic choices; they help your prospective clients understand whether you’re the right culture fit for them. In content strategy, we often talk about “jobs to be done”—the real-world tasks, goals, or emotional needs your client is trying to meet. For a caregiver reading a healthcare firm’s website, the job might be finding fast, trustworthy answers for a loved one. For a startup looking for a law firm, the job might be finding a partner who understands their pace and risk tolerance.

Your voice can signal that alignment before a human conversation ever happens. A gentle, plainspoken tone might speak volumes to someone who feels overwhelmed. A confident, decisive tone might reassure someone facing a high-stakes decision. And a granular, precise voice might signal that ytake accuracy and professionalism seriously—and expect the same from your clients.

This level of nuance doesn’t happen by accident. It happens in the prompting AND the edit. It happens when a human professional with expertise in both communication and your industry reviews every line with intention.

How to build a consistent voice and tone

Have you ever asked an AI platform to summarize your website’s voice and tone? It’s a good gut check. This is how ChatGPT summarized LaFleur’s voice and tone.

I’m pretty happy with this assessment. If it was dramatically off base, that would be time to do a comprehensive content audit.

Once you have a good definition of your firm’s voice and tone, you can train your AI tools on it. This training will improve your first drafts and reduce the amount of human editing needed. But, as you review your AI-generated content, you should do a read-through that only focuses on voice and tone.

If your content feels impersonal or robotic, read it out loud. How would you or your brand ad lib the information? If you were in a meeting with a client, how would you explain those concepts? Take those insights and incorporate them into your content.

And do this each and every time you create content.

Making the content helpful, not just readable

Let’s be honest: a lot of AI content sounds right, but doesn’t say much. It repeats common knowledge, regurgitates top-ranking headlines, and fills space without advancing the conversation. Helpful content, on the other hand, does at least one of the following:

Explains something clearly and accurately
Provides original insight or perspective
Helps the reader make an informed decision
Anticipates the reader’s next question and answers it

This is where human editors shine. You can draw on institutional knowledge, audience insight, and lived experience to shape content that not only informs but serves. (And this is precisely the kind of content that Google’s Helpful Content System is looking for.)

So, if your AI tool gives you the same advice as a dozen other pages, you should add value by including real-world context, case studies, or your team’s unique perspective. And don’t stop at surface-level explanations. Anticipate and address your audience’s follow-up questions to help users feel informed and confident in their next steps.

And, please, avoid clickbait and empty promises. If your headline says “The Complete Guide to HIPAA Compliance,” the body better deliver. Misleading or shallow content signals low value to both readers and search engines.

Tailoring your content: Consider purpose and channel

A blog isn’t a white paper. A LinkedIn post isn’t a landing page. A client-facing FAQ isn’t a thought leadership article. But AI doesn’t always make those distinctions—and why would it? Most tools are trained on a wide range of source material, but they lack the context of channel-specific strategy.

Each channel serves a different purpose and speaks to a different point in your audience’s journey. For example:

Blogs support education, visibility, and SEO. They’re discoverable resources for people actively looking for answers.
White papers and ebooks offer in-depth, high-value content for decision-makers and evaluators.
Social media demands brevity and scannability—your message needs to resonate in seconds.
Landing pages are built for conversion. Every word, heading, and button matters.
FAQs require clarity, empathy, and accuracy, often at a high reading comprehension level.

If you don’t adapt your message to the channel, you risk wasting time and money on content that never finds its mark—or worse, erodes trust.

Make sure you understand not only the format, but also the user expectations that come with it. Ask yourself: Where will this appear? What device will someone use to read it? What’s their mindset when they land here? And most importantly, what do we want them to think, feel, or do?

Getting it wrong doesn’t just dilute your message. It sends the signal that you don’t understand your audience’s needs.

Don’t forget copyright

Copyright might not be a massive issue for some of your content (You might not be incredibly protective about that “10 steps you need to take after a car accident” blog.) But it is an issue for high-value assets like ebooks, white papers, thought leadership articles, and branded assets like taglines.

Under the current U.S. Copyright Office guidelines, if AI writes all your content, you don’t own it in a legal sense—and that’s a risk, especially when you’re investing in cornerstone content that defines your brand or supports long-term campaigns. To secure copyright protection, a human must contribute meaningfully to the final work.

How do you protect your firm? Build human editing and authorship into your AI content workflows from the start—not just for polish, but to ensure your organization retains full rights to the assets you’re investing in.

Human editors aren’t a bottleneck—they’re a competitive advantage

It’s tempting to view the human review process as a delay. After all, the AI already “wrote it,” right? But the human layer is where the value lives. It’s where:

Risk is reduced
Strategy is reinforced
Trust is built
Quality is assured

In highly regulated industries, those things aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re essential. When your content has legal, ethical, and brand-level implications, moving fast without guardrails isn’t efficiency—it’s exposure.

So don’t think of the human editor as an obstacle. Think of them as a translator, advisor, and advocate—someone ensuring that your AI-generated ideas resonate with real-world audiences, in the right way, at the right time.

Need a human touch for your AI-generated content? At LaFleur, we specialize in helping regulated businesses turn drafts into deliverables. Whether you’re starting with AI or building from scratch, we bring strategic insight, compliance experience, and real editorial polish to every piece.

Let’s make your content work harder—and smarter.

Let’s talk