Why Most Indie Products Sound Like Robots

Read the copy on ten indie products. They all sound the same.

"We help you [verb] your [noun] so you can [vague benefit]."

"The [adjective] way to [task]."

"Start your journey today."

This isn't a coincidence. It's a symptom.

The AI Copy Problem

Most indie products use AI to generate copy. ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper. The tools are fast and cheap.

They're also homogenizing the internet.

AI is trained on existing text. It produces text that sounds like average. Maximum statistical likelihood. Minimum distinctiveness.

"When everyone uses AI without constraints, everyone sounds the same."

Paul Graham warned about this pattern in his essay Write Like You Talk: "Bad writing comes from imitating other bad writing." AI accelerates this. It imitates the average of all writing, which produces maximally average output.

The result is copy that sounds like copy. Grammatically correct. Semantically complete. Totally forgettable.

The Constraint Solution

AI copy improves dramatically when you give it constraints.

"Write this like a Sage brand. Direct, calm, no enthusiasm. Never use exclamation points."

"Write this in Derek Sivers' style. Say it once. No padding."

"This brand never uses these words: seamless, powerful, robust, leverage, solution."

"Constraints exclude the generic. What remains is distinctive."

The same AI that produces bland copy with no guidance produces distinctive copy with specific constraints. The tool isn't the problem. The absent constraints are.

Voice Rules as Personality

A brand voice is a set of rules. Things you always do. Things you never do.

Without rules, every piece of copy is a new decision. Different contexts, different writers, different moods produce different voices.

With rules, every piece of copy follows the same patterns. Consistency accumulates into personality.

Mailchimp pioneered this approach with their Voice and Tone guide, later open-sourced as voiceandtone.com. Anna Pickard, their head of brand communications, created specific guidance for every context: success messages, error states, newsletter subject lines.

The result: Mailchimp became recognizable by voice alone.

What Makes a Voice Distinctive

Sentence Structure

Short sentences feel different than long ones. Varied rhythm feels different than monotonous length.

Ernest Hemingway's voice came from sentence structure as much as word choice. Short. Direct. No subordinate clauses hiding in complex structures.

Word Choice

Using "fix" instead of "optimize." Using "ship" instead of "deploy." Using "broken" instead of "suboptimal."

Specific words create specific personalities.

What You Don't Say

Banning certain words creates as much personality as choosing others.

Stripe's famously rigorous documentation style includes a banned word list. "Please" is discouraged. "Simply" is banned. These absences shape voice as much as presence.

Punctuation Habits

Zero exclamation points feels different than three per paragraph.

"Punctuation is tone of voice in print. Exclamation points are shouting. Periods are calm."

Building Your Voice Rules

Start by noticing what you already do.

Find your three best pieces of copy. What patterns appear? Sentence length. Word choice. Tone markers.

Then lock those patterns.

Write them down: - "We use short sentences. Rarely more than 15 words." - "We never use these words: [list]." - "We sound like [writer x], not [writer y]."

Document the rules. Apply them everywhere.

The Robot Test

Read your product copy aloud. Does it sound like a person or a template?

Could your competitor say the exact same thing? Would it be wrong for a completely different product?

If the answer is yes, your copy is too generic. The robots took over.

"Distinctiveness beats polish. Robots are polished. Humans are distinctive."

Fix It With Constraints

Find a piece of copy that sounds generic. Rewrite it with three constraints:

1. Maximum sentence length: 15 words 2. Banned words: seamless, powerful, robust, leverage, solution, unlock, elevate 3. Tone: Direct and calm, like someone who has done this before

The result will sound different. It might not sound perfect. But it will sound like something.

Vox Animus builds voice rules into every Brand Schema. The output includes specific constraints you can paste directly into AI tools.

"Personality isn't magic. It's constraints, applied consistently."

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Ready to build your voice rules? Try the Vox Animus demo to structure your brand's personality.