Trust in web content is getting harder to earn. A few small, human touches — a real author, real sources, a point of view — show your writing came from a person.
Sometime in the late-90s, US currency changed. It started with the $100 bill — the portrait was enlarged, new security features appeared, and over the next decade those changes spread to the rest of U.S. currency. And while it felt at the time like a rebranding effort (especially to us naive teenaged Best Buy employees), in reality it was a security effort. The new money was designed to be more difficult to counterfeit. The technology of creating counterfeit money had become too sophisticated.
What I remember most, though, isn't the redesign — it's the job retail cashiers took on. The front line of counterfeit detection often was just a part-time Best Buy cashier with a 30-minute video and a very special pen that helped identify a counterfeit bill when drawn on. We felt like the last line of defense against fraud, when really we were a low-tech patch on a high-tech problem — where counterfeit bills were once a lot easier to see, feel, and detect, they were now more sophisticated than our eyes could see. We needed a different test, and this pen was that test.
I am not here to tell you that all web content is now suspect — or even that purposely fraudulent and/or harmful content is reaching a peak due to AI. (It is not helping, that’s for sure.) But I am here to confirm what you might already be feeling: it’s hard to trust web content anymore, because it’s hard to tell what’s been fabricated wholesale — or, in the case of AI search, what’s been mistakenly cobbled together as related.
I AM here to tell you that the burden of proof is shifting. We as web practitioners need to do the little things that help promote trust. We as web practitioners — as editors and designers and writers — need to be forward-thinking in what makes our content trustable. What makes our content look like it took time and came from a human.
Unfortunately, there’s no special counterfeit pen for human writing. Instead, it’s a gut feeling. It’s a growing awareness of AI-written cliches and other tells. Often, it’s simple evidence that a person was there, somewhere, behind the words. (It’s also much easier than you might think.)
Here’s what that looks like:
- Put a name on it. Make sure your content — primarily editorial-style thoughts and industry leadership — includes a real author, a real role, and even a line about why that person knows the subject. Machine-made content comes from nowhere and belongs to no one — so a human standing behind the words is already a mark in your favor. It says someone is willing to be accountable for this.
- Say something only a person would say. Machines aren’t thinking, reasoning beings, and they still struggle with the subtleties of language. This means they present a kind of “average” — a safe, smooth, middle-of-the-road voice. A true point of view is the opposite of average, and it might also be a little weird and unconventional. Fill your writing with real connections and specificity, because both of those are really really hard to fake and usually read as “real.”
- Show your work. Where did this come from? When was it last true? As writers, we know all of these details, but we can’t assume our readers don’t need to hear them. Link your sources, provide real numbers, and add an actual publish date. In fact, add a “reviewed” date while you’re at it — refreshing your article for a new era is the best way to show the human side of learned experience.
- Focus on details beyond the words. Does your header image look like it was designed by a person? Have you added alternative text or captions to your images? Is your meta description focused on what a user gets out of the article, or does it sound like someone smashed 10,000 words into 50? When the margins or your writing are cared for, the whole page feels more genuine and more authentic.
The thing that’s most notable about this list is that none of the tasks are … big. That’s the point! That counterfeit currency pen wasn't a huge move either. It was a small, deliberate thing that helped us build trust within the process, and that’s where we’re at again. As creators and editors, it’s on us to make sure our words aren't misconstrued as AI slop. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the best way to do that is to write as a human — and to leave evidence that we’re actually human in the first place.
