What "Generic" Actually Means and How to Fix It Specifically

"Generic" is a diagnosis that does not tell you what to do. A piece of AI output that reads as generic has specific problems, and each problem has a specific fix. Knowing which problem you are looking at is faster and more useful than a general sense that the piece needs to be better.

Wrong register

The piece is pitched at the wrong level of specificity for the actual reader. This is the most common form of generic. The model defaults to addressing the broadest possible audience, which means anyone in a category ("content marketers," "small business owners") rather than a specific type of person within that category.

The fix is in the brief. "Content marketers" becomes "content marketers who are running a two-person team at a SaaS company and need to produce eight pieces per month with limited internal expertise." The more specific the target reader in the brief, the more specific the register in the output.

In the editing pass, the fix is to find every sentence that could apply to anyone in the category and rewrite it to apply to the specific reader. "Many writers find AI tools helpful" becomes "If you are running three clients and producing eight to ten pieces per month, AI-assisted drafting is the step with the highest leverage." One is a fact about a category. The other is a claim about a specific situation.

Wrong specificity

The piece asserts things without examples, numbers, or concrete cases. "AI tools can significantly improve content production efficiency" is a claim that is technically accurate and completely useless. Significantly by how much? In what part of the production process? Under what conditions?

The fix requires substituting specific claims for general ones. This cannot always be done during the editing pass, because sometimes the specific claim requires research that was not in the brief. When the research was done properly before the brief was written, the brief includes the specifics and the model writes around them. When it was not, the editing pass catches the generic claim and sends it back to research.

Wrong rhythm

AI-generated prose tends toward sentences of similar length, similar structure, and similar pattern. Subject-verb-object, consistently. Subordinate clauses distributed evenly. Paragraphs that all close on a summary sentence.

Human writing is less regular. Short sentences land hard after longer ones. Some paragraphs end mid-thought because the argument moves to the next section. Some sentences are complex and run long because the idea is genuinely complex. The irregular rhythm is a sign that someone was thinking through the prose rather than generating it.

The fix in the editing pass is to break the regularity deliberately. Shorten a sentence by removing its second clause. Let a paragraph end on its strongest sentence rather than on a summary of itself. Add one sentence that is distinctly longer or shorter than the surrounding ones. The goal is not to introduce irregularity for its own sake but to restore the irregularity that a real argument produces naturally.

The wrong kind of hedging

There are two kinds of hedging in AI writing. One is useful: acknowledging the limits of a claim, noting when a generalization has exceptions. The other is defensive: adding qualifications to avoid saying anything that could be wrong.

The useful kind sounds like: "This works for most content types. For highly technical white papers, the brief process takes longer and the editing pass is more intensive." The defensive kind sounds like: "Results may vary depending on your specific situation, and it's important to consider your individual needs and circumstances."

The defensive kind never adds information. It only adds uncertainty. Cut it. If a claim needs a genuine qualification, add the specific qualification. If it does not, state the claim.

Locating the problem

Before you start editing a piece that reads as generic, figure out which problem is actually present. Editing for rhythm when the real issue is register wastes time on the wrong pass.

Usually more than one is present. Fixing them in the order listed tends to work well: getting the reader right changes the register, which changes what specifics are needed, which changes the rhythm of the argument, which makes the hedging more obvious and easier to cut.