TLDR:

• You worked on that pitch for an hour. It still sounds like AI writing. Congratulations on that.
• 89% of marketers now use AI tools, and 52% run their content through humanization tools before publishing, which should tell you something about how obvious the problem has become.
• "In today's fast-paced digital landscape" is a confession, not an opener.
• The fix requires getting messier, more specific, and more embarrassingly human, which I understand is difficult for you.
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You rewrote it four times. You swapped the verbs. You trimmed the fluff. You sent it. 
 
The response? "Did you copy this from AI?" 
 
I'm actually embarrassed for you. 
 
You didn't use AI, you just worked really hard to sound exactly like it. Polished to the point of lifelessness. Structured like a product manual. Not a single sentence that couldn't have come from literally anyone else on the planet. This is what AI writing does to people who try to sound professional without actually saying anything. It's a trap. You fell in. 
 
Here's the thing about pitches right now: AI-generated articles have reached parity with human-written articles online. Journalists have spent the last two years reading a flood of identical, frictionless, perfectly structured pitches. They can smell template. They can smell caution. And they delete it before they finish the subject line. 

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5 Signs Your AI Writing Is Getting You Ignored

You open with a TED Talk. 
 
"In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape..." Cool. Now say it like a person who has a body and a blood pressure. If your first sentence could double as the opening slide of a keynote nobody wanted to attend, rewrite it. Your intro has one job: make someone feel something. A nap does not count. 
 
You could swap your brand name for any other brand and nothing would change. 
 
If your email, your landing page, or your pitch still makes sense after a find-and-replace of your company name, it is a template. And journalists recognize templates before they finish the first paragraph, and they do not feel charitable about them. Did we think this through, or did we assume the nice formatting would distract them? 
 
Your voice changes every three sentences. 
 
You start casually. Then you pivot to jargon. Then you drop a buzzword salad with a LinkedIn post sprinkled on top. Pick a voice. Commit to it. Ideally yours, though I understand that's a tall order if you've been letting AI content tools make decisions for you. 
 
Your second paragraph is just your first paragraph in different shoes. 
 
AI writing loves to paraphrase itself. So do insecure writers. If paragraph two is restating what paragraph one just said, delete it. You're adding length to a document that was already overstaying its welcome. 
 
Your punctuation is doing emotional labor your sentences won't. 
 
If your pitch ends with a colon, you're in a thought leadership post. Colons and bullet points make everything feel organized and nothing feel real. If you wouldn't say it out loud to an actual human, re-punctuate it. And then probably rewrite the whole thing. 

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Why AI Content Sounds Like AI Content (And Why That Kills Your Pitch)

Here is the actual problem. AI writing produces text that is technically correct, structurally sound, and completely devoid of the kind of specificity that makes someone stop mid-scroll. 
 
52% of marketers who use AI content are now running it through humanization tools before publishing. The industry is collectively admitting that raw AI output reads like raw AI output. The irony of running your AI content through an AI humanizer so it sounds less like AI is not lost on me. Be so serious right now. 
 
What AI can't do: tell the story that belongs only to you. The client who said the product saved their job and their marriage. The founder who fumbled the launch so badly it went viral. The moment of genuine awkwardness or disaster that proves you're actually in the thing you're talking about. That material exists. Only you can tell the story no one else has, which is why content where humans lead and AI assists, rather than content where AI drafts and humans skim, is the gap in every inbox right now. 

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How to Write PR Pitches That Sound Human

Start with the part that matters. The specific moment. The tension. The thing that would make someone pause. You have five seconds. Spending them on "thrilled to announce" is the same as spending them on nothing. 
 
Write like one person to another person. You know what that person's name is. You know what they cover. You know what would make them lean forward instead of hit delete. Write to that. Generic recipients do not respond to generic pitches, which is so obvious it hurts that I have to explain it. 
 
Let the weird part stay in. The uncomfortable detail, the failure that led to the thing, the quote that sounds too honest. That's the material AI writing will never surface because it's trained on what sounds reasonable, and reasonable is forgettable. 
 
Run the gut check before you send. Can you say this out loud without losing the will to live? Is there a specific moment or story anchoring it? Could this sentence belong to any company? Did you write to connect, or to impress? If the answer to the last one is impressive, rewrite it. 
 
Your pitch doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be irreplaceable. Meaning: written by someone with skin in the game, a voice that's actually theirs, and a story nobody else can tell because it happened to them. 

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How to Use AI Writing Tools Without Sounding Like One

AI writing tools aren't the enemy. Using them as a substitute for having a perspective is where everything falls apart. 
 
The workflow that works: humans lead with direction and voice, AI helps with speed and structure, humans finish with the details that make it real. The workflow that fails: AI drafts everything, a human approves it, nobody reads it. 
 
The pitches landing coverage right now sound like someone wrote them at a slightly uncomfortable level of honesty about something they actually care about. That's the entire competitive advantage available to you, and it costs nothing except the willingness to stop polishing and start saying something. 
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Don't Be A Little Pitch helps brands and founders find the human voice that's been hiding behind safe, structured, lifeless copy.

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FAQ

How do I know if my writing sounds like AI?  
Read it out loud. If nothing sounds uncomfortable or specific to you, it reads like AI writing. Generic phrasing, passive voice, perfect sentence rhythm with zero texture, and no single detail that couldn't apply to any other brand or person in your industry are the main tells. 
 
Does AI writing actually hurt PR pitches?  
Yes. Journalists receive hundreds of pitches and have become very good at identifying the ones that feel generated. A pitch that reads like AI content signals that the sender didn't think hard enough about what makes their story worth telling, which is the primary thing a journalist needs to know before covering anyone. 
 
Can I use AI to help write pitches without it sounding like AI?  
Yes, but only if a human with an actual voice and a specific story is driving the content. Use AI to speed up structure and first drafts. Then replace every generic phrase with something specific, add the detail that only exists in your actual experience, and cut anything that could belong to someone else's pitch. 
 
What makes a pitch sound human instead of AI-generated?  
Specificity. One concrete detail, one moment of real tension, one sentence that reveals something about the writer's actual perspective, and the pitch immediately reads differently from the AI-generated ones in the same inbox. The human voice in a pitch comes from specificity that only exists because someone actually lived the thing they're writing about. 
 
Why do editors reject AI-written pitches even when they're well-structured?  
Well-structured is table stakes. Editors receive hundreds of well-structured pitches. They're looking for a story with stakes, a perspective that's distinct, and a source who clearly has something specific to say. AI writing produces structure without stakes, and structure without stakes earns a delete. 
 
 

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