The “Prompted Voice”

What AI writing is really doing to our writing

My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.

Photo by Jacob Mindak on Unsplash

Writers across the internet are starting to sound the same.

But not in the way you think.

It’s not a shift to AI-generated phrases. It’s a different voice and style with a certain structure.

And this isn’t coincidence. It’s the “prompted voice”.

A hybrid voice shaped partly by the writer, partly by the AI tool they write with, and partly by the invisible rules that modern tools teach through repetition.

---

Writers aren’t writing alone anymore

Most of us have to admit that. We use AI in some way or another.

Not to write the entire thing. That’s still shitty. And blatantly obvious. People who do this loose the AI writing game.

But we use AI in some aspects of the process. Most creators now draft with AI open somewhere. I do too.

• We ask for ideas.

• We ask for drafts.

• We ask for clarity.

• We ask for rewrites.

• We ask for bullet points.

• We ask for structure.

• We ask for variations.

• We ask for “make this sharper” or “make this more interesting.”

Even when the final product is mostly our own, the process isn’t.

AI tools help us write, but they also teach us how to write in their style. We absorb the structure. The transitions. The phrasings.

Over time, our default voice shifts slightly toward the model we use most.

---

The prompted voice is blended

Not the robotic writing people complain about. Again, that’s still pretty bad, and most readers will know immediately if something was entirely written by AI.

The prompted voice is a lot more subtle:

• clean

• somewhat efficient

• pretty clarified

• undramatic unless we want it to

• optimized for readability

• structured in predictable steps

• fond of parallel sentences and thoughts

• light on side tangents… usually

• big on micro-hooks (too big sometimes)

• always trying to keep readers engaged

• and a bit heavy on the cheesy analogies

It’s not bad at all. It’s actually very readable. That blended voice is good.

But it’s not fully ours. It’s a fusion voice. A collaboration, whether we intended it or not.

And it’s becoming a similar blended voice for many writers.

---

How the voice creeps in

The influence doesn’t hit all at once. It happens through tiny repetitions:

• We accept one suggested phrasing because it sounds smoother.

• We follow the structure because it has a good flow.

• We like a transition it generated, so we keep it.

• We reuse the same words it tends to use.

• We follow its pattern of making each paragraph a complete thought.

Little by little, the style becomes second nature. Our first drafts start looking more like the model’s final drafts.

That’s the prompted voice.

But as good writers, we don’t stop there.