Last week helping a friend review AI copy

Xiaolin runs a home bakery in Hangzhou. She asked me to look at her AI-written launch post last night — "craftsmanship in every bite," "a poetic journey for your palate." She laughed at herself.

I've been stuck on this too

Last year when I was running my side hustle, I told AI to "sound more professional." The output was stuffed with "synergy," "closed-loop," "leverage." Nobody read it. Later I realized — when AI sounds stiff, our prompts are usually stiff too.

I just saw an experiment from a team called Little Learner: they trained an AI exclusively on reading material at or below fifth-grade level, with zero exposure to more complex content. The result? The "only-finished-elementary-school" AI performed surprisingly naturally on many real tasks — shorter, more direct, but also clearer. The team wrote on their blog that this finding made them rethink whether AI should be trained to sound more like experts.

For folks like us writing product descriptions, client replies, and Xiaohongshu posts, this is worth chewing on: AI's "human touch" might be worth more than its "expert touch."

Try it today: tell AI to write differently

Cost: $0 (whatever you're already using — ChatGPT, Claude, Doubao all work)

Time: under 15 minutes

Tech barrier: just a chat box, no jargon needed

First step: Open your usual AI and tack this onto the end of your existing prompt: "Write it so a fifth-grader could understand." So instead of "write a product intro that feels professional," try "write a product intro a fifth-grader could understand." See if the output reads better.

Stage-based advice

Just starting out / no clients yet: If you haven't started using AI to write, don't chase new tools. Start with free ChatGPT or Kimi, and keep prompts as simple as possible. Not everyone needs this tool, but if you're already writing stuff, try the "fifth-grader" line — it might surprise you.

Got 1-2 clients: I'd suggest you start paying attention to "client tone." When you write client emails or reply to messages, generate a version in AI first, then manually scrub out the stiff words. Building this habit beats switching AI tools every quarter.

Scaling / team of 3-5: I'd suggest building a team-shared "prompt template library" and writing rules like "write so a fifth-grader could understand" into it. Once style is unified, your external content won't swing between "boss speech" and "student essay." No rush to do it now, but when you're slammed later, you won't have time to fix it.