Don't Make These AI Mistakes

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how we work, including document editing. Want to use AI even better? What follows is a summary of frequent mistakes that we see in the documents that we edit. Follow this quick and simple guide to avoid making mistakes with AI.

1. Relying Solely on AI

One of the biggest mistakes is to rely entirely on AI for editing. While AI tools like Grammarly and Apple Intelligence can catch grammatical errors, they can’t fully understand context, tone, or nuanced meanings. Human oversight is essential to ensure the document conveys the intended message accurately. Consider using AI as a preliminary step and then reviewing the document yourself or hiring a professional editor like PaperBlazer.

A large part of this involves the type of document. For example, there is a huge difference between using AI for an email and a book. Short documents like emails are ideal for AI, since you can easily review changes yourself in a few minutes. However, when you’re writing documents of longer length, it is better to use professional editing service — thus saving you time and trouble in the long run.

2. Avoiding Customization

AI editing tools sometimes include customizable settings that allow you to tailor suggestions based on your writing style, audience, and purpose. Ignoring these options can result in generic results that might not suit your specific needs. 

Most people do not have the time or expertise needed for AI, which is another reason to use a pro editing service. Because we have edited thousands of documents, we specialize in knowing a writer’s unique voice and adjusting texts for the intended audience.

3. Overlooking Consistency

Consistency in writing is key, especially for professional documents. AI tools may not always maintain consistency in terms of style, tone, and formatting. For example, AI will often repeat itself too much, and that can reveal the automation you’ve used. Ensure that you review the document for consistent language, terminology, and formatting after AI has done its job. This is particularly important for large documents or projects that require a uniform voice.

4. Overestimating AI Suggestions

AI tools provide suggestions based on algorithms. As convincing as it can be, AI does not possess real knowledge (thus “artificial intelligence”). Instead, AI suggests based on probabilities — such as what should likely come next in a sentence.

The problem is that suggestions are not always correct. Blindly accepting AI recommendations without understanding the rationale behind them can lead to errors. Always review and understand why the AI is making a suggestion before accepting it. 

To test this, when AI gives you an answer, you can ask, “Are you sure?” If you try that 10–20 times, you’ll be surprised at how often AI starts to question itself. It is alarming, to say the least, and you’ll start to doubt how much AI really knows.

This is one reason why an editing service plays a crucial role in reviewing your documents.

5. Neglecting the Original Voice

Your unique voice is what makes your writing stand out. AI tools can sometimes suggest changes that alter the original voice and tone of your document. Be cautious of edits that strip your writing of its personal touch. 

By its nature, AI “narrows” language to fit within its box — or the trained model it uses. This is why many AI documents seem so similar; they lack the surprise that we experience in natural, human writing. 

To truly stand out, you will want to retain your voice while making necessary corrections to keep your document authentic.

6. Skipping Human Proofreading

Even the most advanced AI cannot replace the human touch. AI tools might miss subtle errors or fail to understand complex sentences. In the hundreds of AI documents that we have reviewed, you would be shocked and appalled at the errors made by AI. Even worse, AI is known to “hallucinate,” a term that describes AI’s overconfidence when it makes an error. After all, AI is programmed to “know,” so it fakes it, even when available information is scarce or incorrect.

Therefore, always have a human proofreader review the document after AI editing. Professional editors can catch errors that AI might overlook and provide insights to improve overall readability and coherence. Unlike AI, our editors will point out areas of nuance, complexity, uniqueness, etc.; for example, we mark “author only” decisions, which are places where we believe the author and only the author (not a computer or even an editor) should make the final decision.

7. Ignoring Context-Specific Edits

AI tools lack the ability to understand the full context of your document. This problem is inherent to AI, since the technology works with prediction of previous contexts; it is not good with contextualizing in new, different, or future contexts. This is why AI can be really good at math, but when you ask it to write for you, the results can be questionable or irrelevant.

The inability to contextualize can lead to suggestions that are inappropriate or irrelevant. For example, technical jargon, industry-specific terms, or creative expressions might be flagged incorrectly. 

Yet again, professional editing helps here. Human beings have a better sense of human contexts. Over-reliance upon machines can lead to embarrassing results.

8. Overloading the Document with Changes

AI tools can suggest numerous changes, which might overwhelm the document with unnecessary edits. Too many changes can make the document confusing and difficult to read. 

At PaperBlazer, we focus on the biggest issues and focus your attention to both minor and major flaws in the document. To AI, all the errors seem the same, but with PaperBlazer, we can help you distinguish between what matters more. This is crucial when you need to make many changes and have limited time.

9. Submitting Entire Documents

Why would you want to submit an entire document to OpenAI? Businesses know the danger of this and purposely avoid ChatGPT for this reason. Unless you have the settings exactly right, your confidential document could be used for training the AI. This means you could lose copyrighted information to the “cloud” of intelligence that will be shared with millions of other users. 

PaperBlazer never shares entire documents like that, so your information is far more secure with professional editing service. AI is far more secure when used for an individual word or phrase; only unidentifiable snippets should be sent to AI. In this way, your entire document is never possessed by OpenAI.

10. Trusting Technology Too Much

Lastly, consider the most obvious mistake: relying on a machine. Think of all the machines you have used in your life. Whether a laptop, phone, car, dishwasher, air conditioner, or any other device, we all know that machines eventually fail us. 

So if your document is casual or not very important, then AI can certainly be used; however, when your most important documents are involved — such as a novel, business proposal, dissertation, etc. — then why risk your future and your success to a machine? Instead,