17 words that make your writing sound AI-generated

Introduction

Some words are not bad on their own. They just get suspicious when they travel in packs.

That is what happens with AI writing. The models lean on a familiar set of polished, abstract words because those words fit almost any topic. Use enough of them in one draft and the text starts sounding machine-made.

If you are editing AI copy, these are the words I cut first. The list comes straight from the Humanizer skill's AI vocabulary section, which is one of the clearest pattern libraries for this problem.

The 17 words to watch

Here are the usual repeat offenders:

1. actually
2. additionally
3. align
4. crucial
5. delve
6. emphasizing
7. enduring
8. enhance
9. fostering
10. garner
11. highlight
12. intricate
13. landscape
14. pivotal
15. showcase
16. testament
17. underscore

None of these words are illegal. The problem is frequency. AI drafts tend to stack them together until the prose takes on that familiar "thoughtful but generic" tone.

Why these words give the draft away

Most of the list does one of three things:

• inflates importance
• adds abstraction
• imitates analysis without adding detail

"Pivotal" sounds bigger than "important." "Landscape" sounds more strategic than "market." "Underscore" sounds more analytical than "show." The model keeps reaching for those upgrades because they sound polished.

Readers notice. Maybe not consciously, but they notice.

What to use instead

Usually the fix is blunt language.

• "additionally" becomes "also" or disappears
• "enhance" becomes "improve," "speed up," or something more specific
• "showcase" becomes "show"
• "landscape" becomes "industry," "market," or the exact category you mean
• "delve into" becomes "explain" or nothing at all

The right replacement depends on the sentence, but the direction is almost always the same: fewer abstractions, more plain speech.

A quick before and after

Before:

Additionally, the platform showcases a robust feature set that enhances collaboration across the marketing landscape.

After:

The platform includes shared drafts, comments, and approvals, so marketing teams can work in one place.

The second line is not better because it uses simpler words. It is better because it says something real.

How to edit for this fast

When I review a draft that smells AI-generated, I search for the whole cluster at once. If I find three or four of these words in one paragraph, I know the paragraph probably needs deeper edits than a synonym swap.

A fast pass looks like this:

• search the document for high-frequency AI words
• replace the abstract noun with a concrete one
• replace the inflated verb with a direct one
• cut the sentence if it still says nothing afterward

That last step matters. Sometimes the whole sentence is decorative.

This matters for SEO too

Search traffic does not come from sounding more polished than everybody else. It comes from being clearer, more useful, and easier to trust.

Pages full of AI-favorite words tend to blur together. They rank for the same terms, make the same broad claims, and leave the reader with nothing memorable. If you are publishing into a crowded SERP, that is a problem.

If you want a broader cleanup process, pair this list with Make AI text sound human: 10 signs + fixes and How to humanize AI text without changing meaning.

Use a tool, but do not outsource taste

Tools can help catch the obvious phrases. The free AI humanizer is useful for a first cleanup pass, and the AI humanizer is better when tone matters. But neither tool can decide whether a sentence deserves to exist.

That part is still on you.

Conclusion

If your writing sounds AI-generated, do not start by obsessing over punctuation or sentence length. Start with vocabulary. A small cluster of overly polished words can make an otherwise decent draft feel synthetic.

Cut the abstract language. Say the thing plainly. The voice gets more human almost immediately.