Tone of voice is an organisation's deliberately chosen way of sounding – and at a time when AI can imitate any style, the voice is a strategic choice, not decoration.
As long as people wrote all the text, the voice emerged by itself – as the sum of those people's language. Now a language model can write formally, playfully, authoritatively or warmly on command. Style has become a setting you choose.
That creates a new requirement: if you have not described how you sound, the machine chooses for you – and it chooses the average. A written tone of voice is therefore no longer a nice document in a drawer, but a management tool for all AI-assisted text.
In practice
A tone of voice guide that is concrete enough to be part of a prompt – words you use, words you avoid, before-and-after examples – means that newsletters, press releases and LinkedIn posts sound like you, regardless of who or what wrote the first draft.
How to explain it to the leadership team
»When the machine can imitate every style, our voice is a decision – it has to be described, or the AI will make it for us.«
I have unfolded why the voice is strategy and not decoration in the article Tone of voice is not decoration.