AI copy all sounds the same because nobody built the checklist to prevent it. The default output has em dashes everywhere, negation-affirmation patterns (“Not X. Y.”) on every other paragraph, fortune-cookie closers, and a register that belongs to no specific person. You can hear it without reading more than two sentences. The fix is a governance checklist: specific, enforceable rules that catch the failure modes before they ship.

Here’s how to build one for your own work.

Start with your failures. Read your last five pieces of AI-assisted writing and mark every sentence that could appear on someone else’s site without anyone noticing. Those sentences are the problem. They’re competent, clean, and belong to nobody. The checklist exists to catch them.

Each rule needs to be binary. Pass or fail, no interpretation required. “Write in a more authentic voice” is a wish. “Zero em dashes” is a rule. The first one lets you rationalize anything through. The second one catches eleven em dashes on a single page, which is exactly what happened on an early draft of one of my project pages. Every one looked fine individually. Together they created a rhythm that belonged to no specific person.

My checklist has twelve items. Here are the ones that do the most work.

Zero em dashes. Binary. You either have them or you don’t. AI defaults to em dashes the way spoken English defaults to “like.” They accumulate into a cadence that signals machine output.

Every “Not X. Y.” pattern must be earned. This is the single most common AI writing tell. “Not a portfolio. A world.” “Not documentation. A living system.” The structure feels insightful because the rhythm implies a correction. But most of the time there’s no genuine misunderstanding being corrected. The negation is doing emphasis work, not clarification work. The test: if the reader wouldn’t actually think X before you said Y, rewrite it.

Zero banned words. I maintain a list: paradigm, leverage, passionate, innovative, synergy, empower, journey, transformative. Each one signals nothing. They’re filler that sounds like content. Binary check.

No fortune-cookie closers. “The structure is the signal.” “The method is the message.” Sentences that feel like insight without containing any. I caught one on an early draft that ended with a line like that. Read it twice before I noticed it meant nothing. That catch became a rule.

Does it feel like a room? Would it feel wrong on someone else’s site? This is the identity coherence check. A page can pass every mechanical rule and still read like competent generic copy. This item catches the kind of writing that could belong to anyone with similar credentials.

Build the list from your own catches. Every time you spot a pattern in your output that sounds like AI instead of you, name the pattern and write a prohibition specific enough that you can’t rationalize past it later. Your list will look different from mine. The method is the same: catch the failure, name it, codify the rule, enforce it before anything publishes.

The checklist doesn’t produce voice. Your source material produces voice. The checklist prevents the tool from overwriting that voice with its default register. The difference between AI copy that sounds like everyone and AI copy that sounds like you is whether someone built the governance to protect the difference.