Why Does AI Content Need a Human Touch?

Because if every brand in your category leans on the same AI tools, every brand's content starts to sound generic and vanilla.

Quick Answer

• AI content alone makes brands sound the same, generic, and vanilla.
• 12 months of AI-heavy content has flattened brand voices across categories.
• Brand awareness depends on standing out, which needs human creative direction on top of AI.

Why AI alone makes B2B brands sound identical

The first thing every marketing team did with AI was crank up content output. Instead of 5 blogs a month, ship 50. Sherri Schwartz, Head of Marketing at Ovation CXM, says the results after a year are now obvious.

"Everyone's message is the same and it's generic and it's become more vanilla." — Sherri Schwartz

Sherri isn't anti-AI. She uses it constantly. But she draws a hard line at making AI the sole engine for content production.

The reason ties back to brand awareness. Brand depends on being recognizable. AI defaults toward the average, which means if every team in your category is prompting similar tools with similar inputs, the outputs converge toward sameness. The signal that used to differentiate one brand from another gets compressed.

The fix isn't to throw AI out. It's to keep AI for the parts where it actually helps, like draft iteration, summarization, and repurposing, while keeping a human in the loop for the creative direction, the voice, and the choices about what to say. Video helps here in a structural way: a real person on camera, in their actual voice, with their actual stories, is the single hardest thing for AI to mimic.

Sherri's bottom line on AI as a sole content engine: don't.

"I wouldn't put all bets on it to be your content engine solely without having that human kind of intervention and creative thinking attached to it." — Sherri Schwartz

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens when B2B brands rely too much on AI content?

Their content starts sounding identical to their competitors. Sherri Schwartz at Ovation CXM says that 12 months of AI-heavy content production has made brand messaging across categories noticeably more generic and "vanilla." Brand awareness depends on standing out, and AI defaults toward the average.

How should marketing teams use AI without losing their brand voice?

Use AI for the mechanical parts, like draft iteration, summarization, and repurposing existing content into new formats. Keep humans in charge of the creative direction, the angles, the voice, and the strategic choices about what to say. AI works best as an augmentation of a person's work, not a replacement for the person.

Why is video harder for AI to make generic?

Because video captures a real person speaking in their actual voice, with their stories, expressions, and word choices. That texture is hard for AI to fake convincingly. Even when AI tools help with editing or repurposing, the source recording carries the human signal that makes the brand recognizable.

Full Clip Transcript

I think so many, the first thing everybody wanted to try was AI for content output. Let me just utilize AI and do I need a content writer or they're going to just create instead of five blocks, 50 blocks in a month. I'm just throwing some numbers out there. But I think what you've actually seen in the 12 months that a lot of organizations have been leaning heavily into AI content is that everyone's message is the same and it's generic and it's become more vanilla. In reality, I think that it's actually proven you really still need human touch to it to creatively stand out for your brand. And I think it goes back to like brand awareness is such a critical part for an organization. And you have to have that human touch to it. If not, I think what you've seen, AI is so wonderful, but I wouldn't put all bets on it to be your content engine solely without having that human kind of intervention and creative thinking attached to it.