- AI sounds generic because it has never heard you. Show it how you really write and it changes fast.
- The best samples are the ones you never polished. Texts, quick emails, notes.
- Only give it YOUR side of the conversation. Nobody else's words.
- You don't need 82,000 texts. Twenty real messages will get you most of the way.
Every time I asked AI to write something for me, it came back sounding like a press release.
“Excited to announce.” “Leverage.” “In today's landscape.” I have never said any of that out loud in my life.
So I tried something. I had it go study how I actually talk.
What I gave it
82,477 text messages. All ones I sent, over about two years. Only my side. It didn't read anybody else's words for style, and that was a rule from the start.
I added a batch of emails I typed myself. Not the polished ones. The fast ones.
Then I asked it to write a guide to how I talk. Patterns only. Nothing private. No names, no details about anyone's life.
What it found
Some of it I knew. Some of it made me laugh.
- My typical text is 5 words long. Nine out of ten are under 16 words. I send a bunch of short ones instead of one long one.
- Only about 9% of my messages end in a period. About 1.5% have an exclamation mark. I am not an exclamation mark person.
- I said “lol” about 3,400 times. It's rarely about a joke. I say something real or blunt, then let the air out with a lol.
- I almost always start with a capital letter. Casual, not sloppy.
- I use old-school manners with clients and blunt talk right next to it.
None of that is in any writing advice. It's just me. Which is the point.
If a sentence could appear in a press release, I didn't write it.
What changed
Now anything AI drafts for me reads the guide first.
The drafts come back shorter. Drier. They sound like a guy you'd actually talk to. I still edit them. But I'm fixing a line, not rewriting the whole thing.
It also wrote a list of words I'd never say. That list might be the most useful page in the whole guide.
Try this today
You don't need 82,000 texts. Do the small version.
- Copy 20 real messages you wrote. Texts or quick emails. Pick ones you didn't polish. Only your side, and nothing private.
- Paste them into your AI tool and say: study how I write. Describe my voice in 10 bullet points. List 10 words or phrases I would never use.
- Save what it gives you. Paste it at the top the next time you ask it to write something for you.
- Read the result out loud. If you wouldn't say it to a friend, tell it that. It learns.
One caution
Be careful what you hand over. Your own words are yours to share. Other people's messages are not.
I kept it to my side of every conversation and had it record patterns, not stories. That's a good rule for anything you give an AI.
Questions people ask
How do I get AI to write in my voice?
Give it real samples of your own writing, ideally unpolished ones like texts and quick emails, and ask it to describe your voice and list words you would never use. Save that description and include it whenever you ask the AI to write for you.
How many writing samples does AI need to learn my style?
Far fewer than you'd think. Around 20 real messages is enough for a useful voice description. More samples help it catch habits like sentence length, punctuation and favorite phrases, but the first 20 do most of the work.
Is it safe to give AI my text messages?
Only share your own side of conversations and leave out anything private or anything that belongs to someone else. Ask the AI to record patterns in how you write, not the content of what was said.
