How to add personality to AI content: A practical guide

Let's be honest, the challenge isn't just creating content with AI anymore. It's creating content that doesn't sound like it was written by a robot with a thesaurus. The internet is flooded with generic, soulless text, and we've all gotten pretty good at spotting it from a mile away.

That kind of bland content doesn't do you any favors. It doesn't build trust, keep readers engaged, or help you build a brand people remember. Personality is what makes you stand out. The good news is that giving your AI content a personality isn't magic; it's a process that blends your human creativity with AI's efficiency.

While many AI tools can produce a rough first draft, more advanced platforms like the eesel AI blog writer are designed to generate more complete, publish-ready content that has a natural, human-like tone baked in from the start.

What is AI personality and why does it matter?

First, let's clear something up. When we talk about "AI personality," we're not talking about AI becoming self-aware or developing feelings. It's about intentionally programming a specific style, tone, and voice into an AI so its output aligns with your brand. As the folks at OpenAI have explained, it's all about shaping how the answers feel, not what they think.

This isn't some niche idea, either. The big players are all in on it. ChatGPT now offers seven different personality settings, including options like Professional, Friendly, Candid, and even Cynical. This shift shows that the industry gets it: neutral, one-size-fits-all output just doesn't cut it.

To really nail this, you need to understand its three core components:

• Voice: This is your brand's unique perspective. Are you the expert guide? The witty best friend? The trusted advisor? Your voice is the constant that runs through everything you create.
• Tone: This is the attitude or emotion you adapt for a specific piece of content. Your voice stays the same, but your tone might shift from formal for a whitepaper to witty for a social media post or empathetic for a customer support message.
• Style: This is the "how" of your writing. It covers everything from your vocabulary and sentence structure to your formatting choices (like bullet points) and use of humor.

  

The foundation: Defining your brand personality

Here's the most important part: you can't ask an AI to write with personality if you haven't defined what that personality is. Jumping straight to prompting without this groundwork is like asking a builder to construct a house without a blueprint. A clear definition of your brand's personality is the single most critical step.

Create brand voice guidelines

Your old-school brand guide probably won't cut it here. As copywriter David Faroz Precht notes, you need to write your guide as if you're training a new employee (which, in a way, you are). Vague instructions just lead to vague results.

The Old Way (Less Effective): A list of bullet points like:

• We are genuine.
• Our tone is friendly.
• Be helpful.

The New Way (Much More Effective): Direct, actionable instructions like:

• "You are a supportive and knowledgeable chatbot. Your main goal is to help customers find the exact product they need. If you don't have enough information, always ask clarifying questions."

The first is a wish list; the second is a job description. This distinction is visually summarized in the graphic below.

Analyze your best content for examples

Don't just rely on descriptive words. Research from the Nielsen Norman Group found that training an AI with actual sample copy often produces far better and more consistent results than just feeding it a list of tone words.

Take some time to audit your top-performing content: the blog posts with the most shares, the emails with the highest open rates, the social posts with the best engagement. This human-led analysis will show you what kind of voice already connects with your audience. That content is the perfect source material to show your AI, "Hey, I want you to sound more like this."

Set up your brand voice in an AI tool

The good news is that many modern platforms are built to handle this. Tools like HubSpot's Breeze AI, for instance, offer structured ways to define and save your brand voice. The process usually looks something like this:

1. Provide writing samples: You'll upload or paste in at least 500 words of your best content.
2. Describe your target audience: Who are you talking to? What do they care about?
3. Select personality characteristics: You'll choose from a list of traits like "witty," "formal," or "inspiring."
4. List terms to avoid: Are there any industry jargon or specific phrases you want the AI to steer clear of?

   

To get started, you can use a simple table like this to build out your own AI brand voice guidelines.

Practical techniques for adding personality

Once you've got a clearly defined brand voice, it's time to put it into practice. This is where you move from theory to application and start translating your guidelines into compelling, personality-driven content.

Master detailed prompts

It's a simple rule: basic prompts get you basic results. If you want sophisticated output, you need to use sophisticated prompts.

In my experience, the more literal you are with ChatGPT, the closer it'll be able to produce the result you're after. ​ For example: Bad: 'do you think you would be able to possibly help me write a scenario where x y z...' Good: 'Write me a scenario where x y z...'

Reddit

• Use multiple tone words: Instead of just saying "write in a friendly tone," try "write in a friendly, confident, and professional tone." This gives the AI more nuance and prevents it from over-exaggerating a single trait (which often leads to cringey, overly-enthusiastic text).
• Provide examples: Give the AI a short paragraph that perfectly captures the tone you're for. Say something like, "Here is an example of the tone I want you to replicate: [paste example here]."
• Use capitalization for emphasis: When you have a critical instruction, use capitalization to make it stand out. For instance, "ALWAYS ask a clarifying question before providing an answer" or "DO NOT use clichés or marketing jargon."
• Ask for alternatives: Instead of taking the first thing the AI generates, ask it for 3-5 different versions of the copy. This gives you more options to choose from, and you can often mix and match the best parts of each.

Layer in the human touch during edits

Even the best AI should be treated as a super-powered assistant that produces a strong first draft, not the final product. The editing phase is where you sprinkle in the magic that only a human can provide. Here are a few "human touchpoints" to add:

• Personal anecdotes or real-world stories that relate to the topic.
• Rhetorical questions that make the reader pause and think.
• Appropriate humor, clever metaphors, or colloquialisms that feel natural.
• Unique insights, opinions, or predictions that only a human expert in your field would have.

Use a context-aware AI for automation

Manually inputting brand guidelines and detailed prompts every single time can get tedious. To streamline this process, you can use a tool that automates it. The eesel AI blog writer, for example, is specifically built to generate content with your brand's personality already baked in.

It includes several features to help with this:

• Automated brand context: You just give it your website URL, and it analyzes your site to understand your products, positioning, and overall tone. You don't have to manually feed it writing samples every time.
• Social proof integration: It has a unique feature that finds and embeds real, relevant Reddit quotes directly into the blog post. This adds a layer of genuine human perspective and credibility that's impossible to fake.
• Complete post generation: Instead of a simple text draft, it creates a full article, complete with a human-like tone, headings, images, and SEO optimization, that's ready to go live.

Common pitfalls to avoid

Like any new technology, there's a learning curve. Teams often make the same few mistakes when they first start trying to inject personality into their AI content. Here’s what to watch out for, based on advice from content experts at Optimizely.

Assuming the AI knows your personality

Many people give the AI a simple instruction like "be funny" and the result is either painfully generic or just plain weird. Even with good initial instructions, the output can be inconsistent. The solution is to always be specific. Provide clear inputs, detailed tone guidance, and high-quality sample copy. Don't be afraid to regenerate, refine your prompts, and iterate until you get it right. It's a collaboration, not a magic button.

Forcing a personality that isn’t authentic

This happens when a B2B cybersecurity company tries to sound like a quirky, meme-loving Gen Z brand. When a personality doesn't align with your brand's core purpose, it comes across as inauthentic and can actually erode trust. Ground your AI's personality in your actual brand values. Authenticity will always be more effective and sustainable than forced humor or a personality that just doesn't fit. What do you really stand for? Start there.

Creating an inconsistent voice across channels

Your blog sounds professional and authoritative, your social media sounds casual and witty, and your support emails sound stiff and robotic. This happens when different team members use different prompts or tools, leading to a chaotic and confusing brand experience. Your brand voice guidelines must be the single source of truth for everyone. To enforce this, consider using a centralized platform. For example, a tool like eesel AI allows you to create multiple AI teammates for different departments, ensuring that everyone, from marketing to support, is working from the same playbook.

Finding the sweet spot between automation and authenticity

So, how do you add personality to AI content? It boils down to a few key things. Defining your unique voice is non-negotiable. Mastering detailed prompting and layering in a human touch during edits are crucial steps. And, ultimately, using the right tool can make all the difference.

For a visual guide on these techniques, the following video offers a step-by-step walkthrough on how you can use AI tools to develop more compelling and lifelike character voices for your content.

This video demonstrates several incredible ways you can use AI to speed up the process of creating lifelike characters for your content.

The future of content isn't a battle between humans and AI. It's a partnership. It's about using AI to empower human creativity, allowing you to scale the production of high-quality, personality-driven content that builds a real, lasting connection with your audience.

Ready to create content that sounds like your brand, not a robot? The eesel AI blog writer learns your business and generates complete, publish-ready blog posts with personality built-in. Generate your first blog for free to see the difference for yourself.