How to make AI slide text sound human: a five-step editing pass

Why does AI slide text read as generic?

A language model tends to write the likeliest sentence, and the likeliest sentence is safe: balanced, abstract and polite. Slides need the opposite. Plan for a slide to be read in roughly 2 to 6 seconds (our planning assumption; see words per slide), so it wants a specific noun, an uneven rhythm and an opinion.

Drafts from AI tools tend to share four habits. They start with a lead-in sentence before the point. They prefer abstract nouns such as "productivity" and "success". Their lines are all roughly the same length. And they avoid taking a side. Each habit is fixable by editing, and the edit is almost entirely subtraction.

This page covers the voice of the text. For how many words a slide can hold, see words per slide.

What is the five-step editing pass?

Do the steps in this order. The early ones are mechanical and fast. The later ones need judgment, so spend them only on slideshows worth posting.

1. Cut. Delete the first clause if the point comes after it. Remove hedges ("may", "can help to", "tends to"), intensifiers ("really", "very") and the recap at the end. Test: does the slide still make sense with the first sentence gone?
2. Concretize. Replace each abstract noun with something a stranger could picture: an object, a number, a name or a time. "Improve your focus" becomes "Phone in the other room." Test: could a stranger draw it?
3. Vary the rhythm. Follow a longer line with a two- or three-word one. Allow fragments. Break the habit of three items of equal length. Test: read the whole slideshow aloud. If it sounds like a metronome, shorten every second slide.
4. Take a side. Use "you" and "I", use contractions, and say which option you prefer. Replace "some people believe" with what you believe. Test: could a different account post this unchanged? If yes, add something only you could say.
5. Remove the tells. Cut stock phrases that mark text as machine-written: "Whether you are a beginner or an expert", "It is important to note", "Here's the thing", "ultimate guide", and the pattern "It's not X, it's Y" used more than once in a post. Check for em dashes used as a tic.

What do five before and after slides look like?

Each pair comes from a different slideshow. The "before" lines are typical of unedited AI output. The "after" lines come from applying the steps shown.

Notice what the edits did not do. They did not add personality with jokes or emoji. They removed what stood between the reader and the point, and the voice appeared once the padding was gone.

The edited text, as a stack of slides:

What style brief reduces the editing?

You can ask for better first drafts. Constraints work better than "sound human", which is vague. Paste this into the topic or brief field of whichever AI you use, and replace the braces.

Write for slides read on a phone in roughly 2 to 6 seconds each.
Maximum {12} words per slide. No lead-in sentences. Digits for numbers.
Every slide needs one concrete noun, number or action, never only an abstract idea.
Vary line length: at least one slide under four words, and never three equal-length lines in a row.
Use "you" and contractions. Take a side wherever the topic allows it.
Do not use: "Whether you are", "It is important to", "Here's the thing", "ultimate guide".
Use "It's not X, it's Y" at most once.
Do not end with a recap. End with one task for the reader.

This lowers the amount of cutting but does not remove it. A model that follows every rule in the brief can still produce bland content, so keep the read-aloud test at the end.

How do you edit ten AI slideshows without spending hours?

If one topic gives you many slideshows, triage instead of editing everything.

1. Read only the covers first. Delete the weak ones.
2. Run steps 1 and 2 on the survivors. They are quick and fix most of the damage.
3. Run steps 3 to 5 on the best three.
4. Test the hooks against each other with the hook testing method.

Fyslide writes the slide texts with the AI you connect and can produce up to ten slideshows from one topic in one job. Its slideshow editor lets you change any text by hand, ask the AI to improve a selection, and restore an earlier version if the edit goes wrong. Measured generation times are on the generation speed page. If your hooks use an open loop, check that the payoff survived the edit with the curiosity hooks checklist.

What should the final read-aloud check catch?

• No slide starts with a sentence you could delete.
• Every slide has at least one specific noun, number or action.
• At least one slide is under four words, and at least one is longer than the rest.
• The post contains an opinion, not just balanced information.
• None of the stock phrases from step 5 are left.
• The last slide asks for one thing, and it is not a request for likes.
• You would say each line to a friend without feeling silly.