How to Check AI Content Before Publishing (13-Point Checklist)

Most conversations about AI content stop at detection. "Is it AI or not?" is treated as the only question worth asking. But any experienced editor will tell you that AI-generated content can fail in a dozen ways that have nothing to do with whether an AI wrote it. A piece can be human-written and still be factually wrong, legally risky, off-brand, or simply boring.

Here is a complete 13-point checklist for every AI-assisted piece before it goes live. Work through these in order — each layer builds on the last.

1. AI Detection Score

What to check: Run the content through an AI detector and note the probability score — not just a pass/fail, but the confidence level.

Why it matters: Google has not confirmed a direct ranking penalty for AI content, but high AI detection scores correlate with thin, generic writing that performs poorly. More importantly, some clients, publishers, and platforms prohibit AI-generated content contractually. Know your score before you publish.

Manual check: Read it aloud. AI writing often has an unnaturally even rhythm — no sentence is too short or too long, no paragraph feels spontaneous.

2. Hallucination Check

What to check: Verify every factual claim — statistics, quotes, dates, names, and URLs — against a primary source.

Why it matters: LLMs hallucinate. They confidently invent statistics, misattribute quotes, and cite studies that do not exist. Publishing false information damages credibility and, in regulated industries, creates legal exposure.

Manual check: Highlight every specific claim and trace it to a source. If you cannot find a primary source in two minutes, treat it as unverified.

3. Legal Risk Scan

What to check: Look for undisclosed AI authorship claims, reproduction of copyrighted phrasing, unsubstantiated health or financial claims, and superlative statements ("the best," "the only") that could constitute false advertising.

Why it matters: The FTC has issued guidance on AI disclosure. Publishing AI-generated content that makes regulated claims without appropriate disclaimers can result in regulatory action or litigation.

Manual check: Read with a "what if this goes wrong?" lens. Ask: would a lawyer approve every claim in this piece?

4. Brand Voice Review

What to check: Compare the tone, vocabulary, and sentence style against established brand guidelines or existing approved content.

Why it matters: AI models default to a generic neutral tone. Unless explicitly prompted, they will not replicate the specific personality of your brand or client. Off-brand content undermines trust and creates a disjointed reader experience.

Manual check: Read three recent pieces from the same brand, then read the draft. If the draft could have been written by any company in the industry, it fails the brand voice test.

5. SEO Quality Check

What to check: Verify keyword integration (not stuffed), header structure (H1, H2, H3 hierarchy), meta description quality, internal link opportunities, and search intent alignment.

Why it matters: AI often produces content that targets a keyword without actually satisfying the search intent behind it. A piece about "best project management tools" needs to make a concrete recommendation — generic overviews no longer rank.

Manual check: Search your target keyword and read the top three results. Does your draft answer the same questions with more depth?

6. Readability Score

What to check: Run a Flesch-Kincaid or similar readability test. Aim for a grade level appropriate to your target audience.

Why it matters: AI often writes at a surprisingly high grade level — long sentences, complex subordinate clauses, academic vocabulary. This reduces comprehension and time-on-page.

Manual check: Flag any sentence over 30 words. Flag any paragraph over 5 sentences. Both are candidates for simplification.

7. Sentiment Analysis

What to check: Assess the overall emotional tone. Is it neutral, positive, negative, or mixed? Does the sentiment match the content's purpose and audience?

Why it matters: A product review that reads as uniformly positive sounds fake. A how-to guide that opens with doom-and-gloom framing loses readers immediately. Sentiment needs to be purposeful and consistent.

Manual check: Read the opening three paragraphs and ask: how do I feel right now? Does that match the intended reader experience?

8. Engagement Prediction

What to check: Assess the hook (first 100 words), subheading variety, use of examples and specifics, and whether there is a clear payoff for the reader.

Why it matters: Time-on-page is a ranking signal. Content that loses readers after the first scroll is underperforming regardless of its AI score.

Manual check: The "so what?" test — after each section, ask whether a reader has learned something concrete they can use.

9. Plagiarism Check

What to check: Run through a plagiarism detector to catch verbatim or near-verbatim reproduction of source material.

Why it matters: AI models are trained on internet content and sometimes reproduce phrases or passages very closely. Unintentional plagiarism can trigger duplicate content penalties and copyright claims.

Manual check: Paste any distinctive phrasing into Google in quotes. If it appears elsewhere, rewrite it.

10. Fact Density

What to check: Count the number of specific, verifiable facts per 100 words. Low fact density (lots of generalities and filler phrases) is a hallmark of AI padding.

Why it matters: Google's quality rater guidelines reward content with genuine information gain — content that adds facts, data, or analysis that does not already exist verbatim elsewhere.

Manual check: Highlight every sentence that contains a specific number, name, date, or verifiable claim. If fewer than 20% of sentences are highlighted, the piece is likely too thin.

11. EEAT Assessment

What to check: Score the content against Google's EEAT framework — Experience (first-hand knowledge), Expertise (domain authority), Authoritativeness (reputation signals), Trustworthiness (accuracy, transparency).

Why it matters: EEAT is Google's primary quality framework for ranking content, especially in YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) categories like health, finance, and legal topics.

Manual check: Ask: does this content show signs of someone who has actually done this? Does it cite credentials? Does it link to authoritative sources?

12. Overall Risk Verdict

What to check: Synthesise all the above checks into a publish/revise/reject decision.

Why it matters: Individual checks can pass while the overall piece still has unacceptable risk. A piece with a clean AI score but high legal risk is still a liability.

Manual check: Use a simple traffic light system. Red on any single critical check (hallucination, legal, plagiarism) = do not publish until resolved.

13. AI Rewrite Review

What to check: If you used an automated rewrite tool to fix AI-sounding sections, review the output carefully. Rewrites can introduce new errors or lose the original meaning.

Why it matters: A rewrite that fixes the AI detection score while garbling the message is worse than the original problem. Quality rewrites should be reviewed by a human editor before publishing.

Manual check: Read the rewritten section alongside the original. Does it say the same thing? Is the meaning preserved? Does it now sound genuinely human?

Should You Use Automated or Manual Checks?

Running all 14 checks manually on every piece of content is not realistic for most content operations. The manual approach works for a single high-stakes piece — a white paper, a cornerstone blog post, an executive byline. For volume production, you need automation.

ScrubLayer runs all 14 of these checks automatically in under 60 seconds, produces a single quality score, and generates one-click rewrites for any flagged sections. The first audit is free — no account required.

Run all 14 checks free at ScrubLayer and see exactly where your content stands before you publish.