17 July 2025
Maintaining a strong brand TOV in the age of AI content production
Putting the fear factors aside, we’ve already figured out that AI tools make the lives of content producers so much easier. Once you’ve honed your prompting skills, AI can churn out the wordage while you sharpen your editing scalpel to do what’s needed. They call this unprecedented efficiency and scalability. But there’s a ‘but’.
As an AI engine I recently asked told me, AI tools “also introduce risks that can undermine brand authenticity, consistency, and emotional connection.”
Straight from the horse’s mouth. And the humans out there aren’t stupid either – they can sniff out the nuanced odour of inauthenticity and, once they do, your brand’s reputation plummets.
On reading this, AI-phobics will be rubbing their hands in glee, eager to stick the knife in. So, okay, let’s do this while we’re here.
Both humans and AI-tools can struggle to maintain a consistent tone across large volumes of output. A key way to avoid this is to create detailed and continuously updated style guides and brand guidelines. Also, a certain amount of ‘policing’ needs to be implemented, as all stakeholders should take the time to check these bibles regularly, as well as ensure their adherence by the wider workforce.
But surely AI tools are perfectly suited to creating routine market missives, to adhering to set guidelines and to performing routine checks, say the AI-enthusiasts. The answer is: sometimes and with careful supervision. AI tools are great for doing the heavy lifting of creating content volume.
Some have bemoaned the lack of creativity in content production since AI entered the picture but, the counterargument reminds us that the careful art of prompt creation has arisen as a skill that content producers now need to develop. And yes, there is even a certain joy in crafting a prompt so well that the AI tool appears to deliver exactly what you have in your head. But it’s a craft that still has a touch of alchemy about it.
Is this a joke? No, it is a valid concern: we do not want our robots to sound like robots, we want them to sound like us – warm and full of life, or reliable and full of authority, or slick and full of innovative ideas. No matter how you want to convey your brand’s persona, one element has to remain constant: the human element. Because, quite simply, humans are the consumers, not machines.
Some would argue that consumers don’t have a choice but to take notice – this is what SEO is for. We’ve all been guilty of keyword stuffing in the past. But, whereas humans can (quite) effectively regulate themselves, the AI tools are less adept with the ‘less is more’ theory. Over-optimization can decimate the flair and personality that make a brand memorable, resulting in a loss of resonance with audiences. Again, those oh-so-human consumers need to be able to connect with a brand, on an intellectual, cultural, and most importantly, emotional level.
As humans, we are also prone to this, but on nothing like the scale that AI can blunder through a difficult messaging scenario.
AI tools simply lack the emotional intelligence to handle sensitive messaging or crisis communications. You can ask Chat GPT what empathy is, but it cannot feel it, or even understand it. At best, it can mimic it because a human tells it what to say.
My trusty AI tool hung its head in shame and admitted that “automated tools can misinterpret context, potentially leading to tone-deaf or inappropriate responses that damage trust.” I patted its non-existent shoulder and told it I was there to help. It was a beautiful moment perfectly illustrating how machines and humans can work with each other and, when they do, the results are optimal.
All levity aside, cultural and regional mis-messaging can lead to some serious problems for a brand, especially if the AI tools that the company is relying on are not tailored for localization. The result is content that fails to take into consideration the multitudes of regional and cultural nuances that are special to each different market. During the last half century, human-generated non-localized translation of marketing material has created havoc for some high-profile brands across the globe. Can we expect machines to learn from this lesson? Only if we instruct and monitor their output rigorously.
Sometimes, AI tools do their job admirably. Here’s a case in point:
Go back, all the way to 2016, and you’ll find that The Washington Post was way ahead of the game. The paper introduced AI-powered audio election results in some of its podcasts, using technology it had developed called Heliograf to provide listeners with localized updates for the House, Senate, and presidential races. Heliograf, which the Post had trialled during the 2016 Rio Olympics, helped the newsroom to automate the delivery of election results and expand coverage to more than 500 races on election night. And guess what? The Post had the real edge over its competitors.
The Post’s podcasts delivered state-specific election results, read by a perky but informative AI voice assistant, giving audiences updates tailored to their location. Using Heliograf in audio content marked a shift in how the newsroom distributed real-time information, making election coverage more accessible for podcast audiences. The paper went on to use the technology to support other newsroom initiatives, like high school sports coverage and comment moderation.
What Heliograf shows is that AI can really support and even improve large-scale, data-driven news coverage. Automating the delivery of localized results freed up journalists to focus on analysis and reporting, while audiences still got the up-to-date information they needed. The project showed that integrating AI into newsrooms could improve efficiency and expand coverage without sacrificing accuracy or relevance.
The experience highlighted the importance of adapting news delivery to audience preferences and platforms. The Post learned that leveraging AI for personalized, real-time updates could increase engagement and set a precedent for future innovations in storytelling and information delivery.
In short, AI is a great tool, especially when the right guardrails are in place. If not, there is a possibility that it will run riot across a brand’s messaging, causing untold damage in the process.
Obviously, an AI tool is a hard worker, able to streamline workflows and increase output, and is a real trooper in stepping up to give any task you ask of it a consolidated effort of Herculean proportions. But. And that ‘but’ deserves to be a sentence in its own right. But – AI tools can blithely introduce content no-no’s such as tone drift and generic messaging, as well as a wholesale lack of sensitivity to context and culture. Gone is any sense of authentic brand identity, gone is the emotional connection for customers, gone is the distinct voice that makes Coke different from Pepsi, for example.
An AI tool will be a good and valued friend to content producers, but not a BFF; it’ll be a tool that supports, rather than replaces, human creativity and judgment. You’re still going to have to do the hard work of updating brand voice guidelines, editing AI output, and constantly retraining AI models as you go. Sounds like a lot of work – but don’t you feel needed?
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About the author
Amelia Morrey is Alpha CRC’s lead copywriter, working with clients across a range of industries, from gaming all the way through to automotive and technology.
