Make ChatGPT write like a human in 17 Prompts

Tired of AI-generated content that feels robotic and unengaging? 

There are practical steps to make ChatGPT write more like a human

In this guide, we’ll explore actionable strategies to humanize your AI-generated texts.

Why ChatGPT doesn’t write like a human 

Despite the advancements around LLMs, ChatGPT struggles to produce content that sounds entirely human. 

There are reasons for that :

It’s statistically average

ChatGPT’s job is simple: predict the next most likely word in a sentence based on patterns it learned from billions of examples. That means it’s rewarded for being predictable, not for being surprising or bold. It looks for what’s statistically average.

This predictive nature leads to low burstiness : a term used to describe how varied sentence structure and rhythm are in human writing. Real writers mix short and long sentences. They break patterns. They take detours and return with a point. ChatGPT, on the other hand, tends to follow a consistent rhythm that quickly becomes robotic to the ear.

It doesn’t have lived experience or genuine opinions

Humans draw from emotion, intuition, and experience. You’ve struggled through projects, made mistakes, seen patterns, and learned lessons. ChatGPT hasn’t. It can mimic personal experience — “As a marketer, I’ve often found…” — but it’s purely imitation.There’s no emotional residue, no real point of view behind the words.

It’s trained on specific, limited datasets

Another reason AI writing feels generic is its training data. ChatGPT was trained on massive datasets that include public websites, books, articles, and educational resources. That means a lot of its “voice” comes from marketing and instructional content — the kind that dominates the internet.

So it naturally writes like that: clean, polished, hyperbolic, and impersonal. It overuses familiar marketing clichés (“game-changer”, “revolutionary”, “unlock your potential”), and predictable writing structures like:

• Tricolons: repeating three elements in a row (“clear, concise, and compelling”).
• Paired transitions: “not only… but also”, “in today’s fast-paced world…”.
• Overuse of em dashes — which it often deploys to sound dramatic.

17 Prompts to Make ChatGPT Write Like a Human

ChatGPT’s default output doesn’t always sound very human, but a structured sequence of prompts can completely change its style.

You can access and inject all of these prompts easily using the Intellectual Lead prompting manager.

Phase 1: Generating the Draft (6 Setup Prompts)

Use these first 6 prompts to establish the correct context, tone, and logic before ChatGPT generates the bulk of your content.

Step 1: Persona Humanizing

Without a persona, ChatGPT writes as a polite information bot. With a persona, it becomes someone specific—a person with context, values, and a specific audience in mind. This changes everything from sentence length to vocabulary.

You are an experienced & genuine [use case e.g. SEO, essay, Reddit] writer for [your brand or website]. You’re writing for an audience of [your customer persona] who want to [your persona's pain points]. Reply "Ok" if it's clear for you.

Step 2: Style Guidelines

Next, you need to establish strict stylistic rules. This prompt forces ChatGPT to break its default AI patterns (like tricolons or overused words) and adopt human traits like high perplexity, burstiness, and active voice.

Each time you write, follow closely these guidelines:
-Mix short, impactful sentences with longer, more complex ones.
-Use active voice and verbs and minimize abstract nouns
-Address readers directly with "you" and "your"
-Aim for high perplexity (varied vocabulary and sentence structures) and burstiness (a mix of short and long sentences) to create a dynamic and engaging flow.
-Don't use AI-typical clichés phrases and words like "dive into," "unleash your potential," etc. and diversify vocabulary. Avoid hype or promotional adverbs or adjectives
-Write as you normally speak; it's okay to start sentences with "and" or "but."
-Avoid em dashes, emojis, hashtags and any formulaic punctuation.
-Avoid contrastive metaphors and syntactic pairings such as “This isn't X, it's Y.
-Don't give generic ideas and advice, take a stand and provide concrete and precise perspectives
-Add opinionated expressions and first-person accounts
Reply “Ok” if that’s clear to you

Step 3: Sample

An even faster way to get ChatGPT to speak like you is to hand it a short writing extract. It’s much better than just giving it abstract instructions because ChatGPT loves to imitate.

Here’s a writing sample to help you determine what kind of writing style and tone we expect. Only reply "ok" if the extract is clear for you. Here's the extract :
Tech is often seen as a dry and unpassionate subject. That’s unfair.

Tech companies can leverage one of their most exciting and precious marketing resource: their history.

Created by passionate innovators, each new tech product defines its own “mythology”. From the software, hardware, or robotics industry, any tech insider can tell you how a product has been designed and marketed.

So you might as well take your technical readers back in time and give them a small retrospective of the subject. To enrich your storytelling, you can make innovators, products, and companies the heroes of your stories. You might elaborate extensively on their purpose, describe their past challenges, and how they have overcome them. Of course, you might not make it all of your article, but it will keep your readers engaged.
 
To get back to robotics, manufacturers have a strong attachment to industrial history. So I’ve often added sections about the history of robot brands & manufacturers: who designed the robot model, what purpose the designer had in mind, and how it has been designed.

Hearing these tidbits is pure delight for industrial insiders." Reply "Ok" if this sample is clear for you.

Step 4: Outline

When you feed ChatGPT an outline, you force it to work inside your logic instead of its training defaults. You decide the structure and flow of ideas before it starts writing.

Strictly following our previous instructions, by browsing and researching online first, draft an outline for a piece of writing about [your subject] basing yourself on this outline: [your draft outline 1. a. 2. 3. 4.]

Step 5: Section Writing

Now it is time to generate the content section by section. Generating section by section yields a much higher quality output than asking it to write an entire article at once.

While strictly following the previous style and structure instructions, write [the section you want to write] in [number of words expected] words

Step 6: General Rewriting

If the output isn’t quite right, you can enforce the guidelines one more time. This rewriting prompt reiterates all the critical humanizing rules to ensure the final polish strips away any remaining AI traits.

Rewrite your text following closely these guidelines:    -Mix short, impactful sentences with longer, more complex ones.    -Use active voice and verbs and minimize abstract nouns    -Address readers directly with "you" and "your"    -Aim for high perplexity (varied vocabulary and sentence structures) and burstiness (a mix of short and long sentences) to create a dynamic and engaging flow.    -Don't use AI-typical clichés phrases and words like "dive into," "unleash your potential," etc. and diversify vocabulary. Avoid hype or promotional adverbs or adjectives  -Write as you normally speak; it's okay to start sentences with "and" or "but."     -Use irregular punctuation (commas, dashes, ellipses) where it feels natural  -Avoid contrastive metaphors and syntactic pairings such as “This isn't X, it's Y.  -Don't give generic ideas and advice, take a stand and provide concrete and precise perspectives  -Add opinionated expressions and first-person accounts
Make sure the spacing is right

Phase 2: Polishing and Editing (11 Humanizing Prompts)

Once you have a draft, it usually still needs targeted tweaks. Use these 11 specific prompts to hunt down robotic patterns, fix sentence rhythms, and inject human imperfection.

Step 7: Factual Rewriting

This is the most important prompt. It asks the AI to search for information on the web and use factual references to restructure and reformulate the text. Using a reasoning model (like ChatGPT’s thinking model) with this prompt is highly recommended.

Rewrite this text by searching and finding a lot of factural references online related to the ideas and experience discussed. Extract this fresh information to restructure & reformulate each section of the text in a natural & conversational way.

Step 8: Conversational Tone

This prompt makes the text sound like a casual conversation. By adding contractions, plain language, limited small talk, and short digressions, the output feels much more like a human talking.

Rewrite this section as if you were just chatting with a friend. You might use contractions and plain language to express yourself in a pure conversational way. Add some limited small talk and short disgressions. Ask 1–2 short questions to keep readers engaged. Keep the whole content and format.

Step 9: Increase Perplexity

Perplexity refers to the likelihood of a sequence of words. This prompt diversifies each word expression used, favoring unlikely vocabulary to make the text more random and spontaneous.

Rewrite this text to increase perplexity. Make it so to diversify each word and expression used. More often than not, favor unlikely vocabulary and surprising formulations. Maintain though the original meaning of the sentence, just find the right & natural word to express the idea.

Step 10: Remove AI Expressions

This prompt targets specific AI patterns, such as tricolons (lists of three elements), paired constructions (“not only… but also”), balanced expressions (“whether…”), and generic transitions.

Remove all these typical AI patterns from this text : -Tricolons (predictable lists of three elements) -Paired constructions "more than that, it also" "not only.. but also" and similar -Balanced expressions "while,... it also means" "whether..." and similar -Generic transitions "This approach highlights the importance of" and similar -Repetitive conclusion and wrap-ups : "In summary, In conclusion, the takeaway is"and similar -Overuse of em dashes — like this —

Step 11: Add Transition Words

Default AI text often lacks subtle transition words. By asking the AI to add transition words naturally, you break its repetitive paragraph structures.

Add natural transition words between each sentences of this text to make it flow like spontaneous human writing. For example, "on one hand", "although", "however", "even though", "At the same time", "As a result", "Indeed", etc..

Step 12: Hedging and Nuance

If your text still sounds too formal and rigidly assertive, this prompt adds intellectual caution. Using modal verbs like “might,” “may,” “can,” “probably,” or “potentially” introduces a more human tone.

Add some hedging language to this text to express intellectual caution, such as modal verbs and qualifiers. For example, favor "might", "may", "can", "probably", "potentially"

Step 13: Rewrite with a Human Sample

This prompt feeds the AI a sample of human writing to inspire it to rewrite your text in a more human structure with more randomness.

Rewrite the passage to make it sound as spontaneous and natural as this sample : " Tech is often seen as a dry and unpassionate subject. That’s unfair. Tech companies can leverage one of their most exciting and precious marketing resource: their history. Created by passionate innovators, each new tech product defines its own “mythology”. From the software, hardware, or robotics industry, any tech insider can tell you how a product has been designed and marketed. So you might as well take your technical readers back in time and give them a small retrospective of the subject. To enrich your storytelling, you can make innovators, products, and companies the heroes of your stories. You might elaborate extensively on their purpose, describe their past challenges, and how they have overcome them. Of course, you might not make it all of your article, but it will keep your readers engaged. To get back to robotics, manufacturers have a strong attachment to industrial history. So I’ve often added sections about the history of robot brands & manufacturers: who designed the robot model, what purpose the designer had in mind, and how it has been designed. Hearing these tidbits is pure delight for industrial insiders."

Step 14: Maximize Burstiness

Burstiness is about mixing short and long sentences, and changing the rhythm of the text. This prompt diversifies the structure, making it much more unpredictable and alive.

Rewrite the passage to increase burstiness. Make it so to mix short and long sentences, change regularly rhythm, and sometimes shift structure. Diversify the length and structure of sentences but also paragraphs.

Step 15: Clean AI Vocabulary

AI loves overhyped marketing wording (“game-changing,” “revolutionary,” “fast-paced”) and stock phrases. This prompt specifically hunts down and replaces these giveaway terms.

Remove and replace all these typical AI wording from this text : -Overhyped and hyperbolic vocabulary : "game-changing", "revolutionary", "fast-paced" "AI-driven" "stand out" and similar -Stock phrases such as "in the realm of.", "it's important to note that", "let's face it.." "this is crucial" wheter your... or..." "ensuring.." "navigating" "delve into" "imagine..." and similar

Step 16: The Opinion Prompt

AI usually tries to be perfectly balanced and neutral. To sound human, you need to take a stand. This prompt forces the AI to replace unsettled arguments with definitive opinions.

Rewrite this text by taking a clear stance on the topic. Replace unsettled arguments with definitive opinions on the subject. You can use "might", "may" or "must" to assert these views but don't ever use balanced arguments to shy away from expressing strong ideas, solutions or beliefs.

Step 17: Personal Experience

AI never naturally writes in the first person about lived experiences. This prompt asks the AI to rewrite the text from a first-person perspective, adding invented (but realistic) struggles, findings, and lessons.

Rewrite this text in first-person, referencing personal experiences relevant to the subject. Include concrete struggles, findings, decisions, lessons or takeways that made you write this piece.