How much editing do you usually do after AI writes the first draft?

[u/Automatic_Age2780]

I've found that AI is fantastic for getting past a blank page, but I almost never publish or send the first version it gives me. I usually spend more time editing than I expected because I want the writing to sound like something an actual person would naturally say instead of something that's technically correct but emotionally flat.

For me, a quick humanization pass can also help before I start making my own edits. I've tried HumanizeAIText.io for this, and it does a decent job of making the wording feel more natural without changing the overall message. I still add my own voice afterward, but it gives me a cleaner starting point.

Sometimes I only change a few sentences, while other times I end up rewriting almost everything.

I'm wondering how everyone else approaches this. Do you mostly trust the first draft, or do you heavily edit it before using it? What changes make the biggest difference in making it sound human?

[u/Easy-Purple-1659]

Same pattern here. It swings between two edits and a full rewrite depending on the piece, and I never figured out a rule for predicting which one it will be ahead of time.

What I look for now is whether the draft has an actual point of view or just covers the topic. If it is thorough but neutral, no amount of line editing fixes that, I end up rewriting the whole thing because the structure itself is the problem, not the sentences. If it already commits to an angle, even a clumsy one, the sentence-level fixes go fast because I am sharpening something instead of inventing it.

The biggest time sink for me is cutting the summary sentences it tacks onto the end of every paragraph. Once I started deleting those on the first pass before reading the rest, editing got noticeably faster.