Build a human review process for AI-written marketing content

To review AI-written marketing content properly, split the work into four jobs and give each a named person: one who checks every factual claim against a source, one who checks that the cited evidence really says what the draft says, one who resolves disagreements, and one who alone approves publication. Then review against a written rubric, not a feeling, and record the outcome. A tool can label a draft's claims and flag which ones lack support, but it cannot decide what your company is willing to say in public. That decision stays with people.

In short

• Separate four jobs: claim verification, evidence checking, dispute resolution and final approval. The person who drafted or prompted the piece should not also be the one who approves it.
• Review claims, not paragraphs. A draft reads fluently whether or not its facts are right, so fluency tells you nothing.
• A label such as "verified by source" is a starting point for a reviewer, not a replacement for one. Check what the label covers and what it leaves out.
• Decide in advance how disagreements end, and who has the last word on each kind of claim.
• Keep a sign-off log. It is the only record that a review happened.

Why does AI-written content need a different review?

AI drafts tend to fail in a specific way: they can sound equally sure about everything. A human writer's uncertainty often shows in the prose; a model's frequently does not. So an editor who reads for flow will approve a draft that contains an invented price, a feature you do not have, or a statistic with no source.

The review therefore has to be structured around claims. A claim here means any statement a reader could check as true or false: a number, a date, a capability, a comparison, a policy, a named source. Everything else (transitions, framing, tone) is style, and a different reviewer can handle it.

Two failure modes are worth naming early. A hallucination is a statement a model produces with confidence that is wrong or has no basis in the sources it was given; see the hallucination glossary entry. A promotional claim is superlative wording ("the best", "leading", "guaranteed") that no evidence supports. Both can survive a read-through, and a rubric gives a reviewer something concrete to check them against.

What can a tool check, and what can it not?

A tool can do the mechanical part of claim checking; it cannot do the judgement part. Be exact about the line, because reviewers tend to over-trust anything that carries a green label.

In DiscoveredBy, the Articles screen drafts from a brief and the pages already read for it, and it labels each claim the writer reports. (Whether drafts are grounded in source pages depends on your plan; see plans and limits.) The labels come from two places. The writer can report that a claim needs your own proof, conflicts with its source, rests on a source that may be stale, or has promotional wording. Any other claim goes through a test in code. It earns "verified by source" only if its quoted evidence is at least four words long, appears in the scraped text of the source page it names, and shares real terms with the claim. Otherwise it is labelled "promotional" or "unsupported".

That is useful, and it has four limits a reviewer must know:

• The test only looks at the claims list the writer handed back. A factual statement in the prose that never made it into that list is not checked either way.
• "Verified by source" means the quote is on the source page and overlaps the claim in terms. It does not mean the source is right, current or authoritative.
• Nothing is removed from the draft. The label sits next to the claim and the draft text is unchanged, so an unresolved claim can still be skimmed past. A claim that is not "verified by source" does lower the article's readiness score and raises a "Fix before publishing" blocker, but the tool does not stop anyone from copying the text out.
• Some outcomes have no draft at all. When the brief recommends updating a page you own, the brief itself is the deliverable, and there is nothing to copy and publish.

The same page notes that, on plans where drafts are grounded in source pages and when the brief calls for a brand new page, a draft can stop with the status "Needs your input" because it needs proof only you can supply, such as pricing or customer proof. Treat that pause as a review step, not an obstacle: a person supplies the fact, from the source of truth, before the draft is rewritten.

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Who should own each part of the review?

Give each job to one accountable person, even if a small team means one person holds two of them. The rule that matters is the last one: the approver is never the drafter.

Two roles usually need a subject-matter owner. Product and pricing claims belong to whoever owns the product or price list; legal and policy claims belong to whoever owns that policy. The verifier does not guess at these. They ask the owner and record the answer.

If you use DiscoveredBy, its project roles are owner, editor and viewer, and the team docs describe what each can do. A viewer can read but not change anything, so the viewer role is one option for a subject-matter owner who only needs to see the draft. Connecting a WordPress account is owner-only (see WordPress drafts). Neither the tool's roles nor its labels replace your own approval step.

What should the review rubric check?

Check each claim against five tests, and mark it pass, fix or remove. The five tests are the rubric; the table below is the working copy.

1. Traceable. Is there a named source for this claim, a page, a document or a person?
2. Supported. Does that source actually say it, and is it a source you would stand behind? Read the source, not the quote the draft gives.
3. Current. Is the source up to date? A price page from last year fails this test even if it says the right thing.
4. Ours to say. If the claim is about your own product, pricing, availability or policy, does your own approved source of truth agree? Mark Y if the claim is not about your business.
5. Plain. Is the wording free of superlatives and guarantees you cannot back?

Claims that come back "needs your own proof", "conflicts with source" or "may be stale" from the drafting step go straight to the top of the queue. They have already been flagged by the writer as risky.

The deliverable: a review rubric and sign-off log

Copy this into your document tool, one row per claim. The fields map to the five tests above, and the last columns record who decided what.

CONTENT REVIEW LOG
Piece: ______________________   Draft version: ______   Date: __________
Drafter: ____________   Claim verifier: ____________   Evidence checker: ____________
Editor: ____________    Approver: ____________

| # | Claim (exact wording)  | Type      | Source (URL or document) | Traceable | Supported | Current | Ours to say | Plain | Outcome        | Decided by | Note |
|---|------------------------|-----------|--------------------------|-----------|-----------|---------|-------------|-------|----------------|------------|------|
| 1 |                        | price     |                          | Y / N     | Y / N     | Y / N   | Y / N       | Y / N | pass/fix/remove|            |      |

Types: price, number, date, capability, comparison, policy, quote, other.
Outcome rules:
- Any N in Traceable, Supported or Ours to say: fix or remove. Never pass.
- Any N in Current: refresh the source or remove the claim.
- Any N in Plain: rewrite the wording; keep the claim only if the rest passes.

DISPUTES
| # | Claim | Verifier says | Evidence checker says | Owner asked | Final call | By | Date |

CLAIMS NOT IN THE CLAIMS LIST (read the prose once more, line by line)
| Line or paragraph | Statement found | Added to log as row # |

SIGN-OFF
[ ] Every row is pass or removed
[ ] Every dispute has a final call and an owner
[ ] Disputed and removed claims were re-read in the final text
[ ] The approver is not the drafter
Approved by: ____________   Date: __________   Publish target: __________

Two habits keep the log honest. Write each claim's exact wording, so the verifier checks what will be published. And fill in the "not in the claims list" section every time: it is where a tool's blind spot becomes your reviewer's job.

How do you resolve disagreements between reviewers?

Settle a disagreement by asking who owns the truth of the claim, not who argues best. Write the rule before the first dispute, so it does not turn into a negotiation.

• Factual claims about your product, pricing or policies: the subject-matter owner decides, and the answer is recorded with the date. If they cannot be reached, the claim is removed, not kept.
• Whether a source supports a claim: the evidence checker's reading stands unless the verifier can point to the passage that says otherwise.
• Claims about other companies or the market: if you cannot cite a primary source, remove them. Do not resolve this by adding hedges such as "reportedly".
• Style, tone and scope: the editor decides.
• Anything still unresolved after one round: the claim comes out. A shorter piece with fewer claims is a fine outcome.

The default to remember is that unresolved means removed. It removes the pressure to publish something nobody is sure about.

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How does this connect to what AI engines say about you?

Review does not end at publication, because what AI engines later say about your brand is a separate thing to check. That is what Fact check is for, and it is important not to confuse it with draft review.

Fact check works from a list of approved facts about your own brand, such as what a plan costs or where you operate, that a person types or approves. It then checks whether AI engines' answers about your brand support or contradict those facts, and it queues contradictions for a person to review. It checks engine answers, not your drafts, so it is not a pre-publication check. Whether it is available depends on your plan. What it can do is tell you afterwards which facts engines are getting wrong.

Two details matter for a review process. First, the verdict on each finding is a model's judgement, not proof; the quote is guaranteed to be in the answer, but a person decides whether the verdict is right. Second, the "Suggest from my site" feature proposes draft facts from your own pages, and the docs say to read each against its source sentence before approving, because the statement is the model's wording. That is the same discipline this post asks of you for article claims: nothing enters the record unread.

If a contradiction turns out to trace back to a page on your own site, the fix is a page edit and a log entry, and our post on what to do when AI gets your pricing or product facts wrong covers that investigation. If your own pages disagree with each other, see run a facts reconciliation review.

A worked example

Quillstone, a document-review software company, has an AI-drafted article titled "How compliance teams can cut contract review time". The drafter is Priya (content). The claim verifier is Marcus (content), the evidence checker is Elena (product marketing), the editor is Tom, and the approver is Dana, head of marketing. The product owner is Sam.

The draft contains 12 claims in its claims list. Five come back "verified by source", two "needs your own proof", two "may be stale", one "promotional" and two "unsupported". That accounts for all 12 (5 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 2 = 12).

Marcus opens the log and starts with the seven claims the tool flagged as risky (2 + 2 + 1 + 2 = 7). Elena checks the sources behind the five "verified by source" claims by reading the pages, not the quotes. Sam is asked about anything only the company can know.

• One "needs your own proof" claim says the software "supports 40 file types". Sam says it supports 32. Marcus corrects it and records Sam's answer and the date. The other "needs your own proof" claim is a policy statement; Sam supplies the approved wording, Marcus rewrites the sentence to match, and it is re-checked.
• Of the two "may be stale" claims, one is refreshed against the current page and one cannot be refreshed, so it is removed.
• The "promotional" claim says Quillstone is "the fastest review tool on the market". Nobody can source it, so it is removed.
• Of the two "unsupported" claims, Elena finds a support article for one and the other is removed.
• Of the five "verified by source" claims, four hold. In the fifth, the quote is on the page, but the page is a competitor's blog post, not a source Quillstone would stand behind. Elena marks Supported as N under the rubric's second test and the claim is removed.

Then Marcus reads the prose once more and finds a sentence with a data-retention period that never appeared in the claims list. It goes into the log as row 13. Sam says the period is wrong, and the sentence is corrected.

Final tally for 13 claims: 4 pass unchanged (the verified claims that held), 5 are fixed and re-checked (file types, the second proof claim, the refreshed stale claim, the re-sourced claim, the retention sentence), and 4 are removed (the stale claim, the superlative, the unsupported claim, the competitor-sourced claim). 4 + 5 + 4 = 13. Tom finds no unresolved disputes, and Dana approves against the log.

The point is not the counts. Every claim ended with a named person's decision, including the one the tool never listed.

What this process cannot tell you

• A clean log does not prove a piece is correct. It proves that named people checked each listed claim against sources they judged adequate. Sources can be wrong.
• Review does not predict AI visibility. Passing review makes an article safe to publish. It does not mean an engine will cite or mention it, and you should not promise that. Treat any visibility effect as a hypothesis to test afterwards.
• Labels are not verdicts. A tool's "verified by source" is a mechanical check on a quote. It cannot tell you the source is current, authoritative or applicable.
• Process can become theatre. If verifiers tick boxes without reading sources, the log is worse than nothing because it looks like assurance. Spot-check a sample of "pass" rows by having a second person re-read the source.

Common mistakes

• Letting the drafter approve. It is the easiest shortcut and the one that defeats the whole process.
• Reviewing the draft's claims list and nothing else, so unlisted statements slip through.
• Treating every claim equally. Pricing, legal and comparison claims deserve a subject-matter owner; a generic transition does not.
• Resolving disputes by softening ("may", "reportedly") instead of sourcing or removing.
• Skipping the log for "small" pieces. The log is short for a short piece, and it is the only evidence you have later.
• Assuming a draft in a connected system is safe. A draft sitting in WordPress is still unreviewed content until your approver signs the log.

Frequently asked questions

Do we still need a human if the tool marks a claim "verified by source"?

Yes. The label says the quoted text appears on the source page and shares terms with the claim. It does not say the page is right, current or a source you would cite. A person still reads the source and applies the "current" and "ours to say" tests.

How many people do we need?

Four jobs need not mean four people. A small team can combine the verifier and evidence checker roles across two people who swap pieces. The one rule not to bend is that the approver did not draft the piece.

Should we review every AI-written piece the same way?

Scale the review to the risk. A piece with pricing, legal or comparison claims needs the full log and a subject-matter owner. A short internal summary may only need a verifier and an approver. Decide the tiers in advance rather than piece by piece.

Where does a WordPress draft fit in this process?

It comes after review, not instead of it. In DiscoveredBy, sending a finished article to WordPress (depending on your plan; see WordPress drafts) creates a new draft post and never publishes it, so your approver still decides when it goes live. Our companion post on the editorial checklist from content brief to WordPress draft covers that handoff; this post covers the review that should precede it.

Can fact check replace pre-publication review?

No. Fact check compares AI engines' answers about your brand with facts you approved. It does not read your drafts. Use it to catch what engines say after publication, and use this review process to control what you say before it.

Next step

Run your next AI-drafted piece through the log above before anyone asks for a publish date. If you already use DiscoveredBy, open Articles to see each draft's claim labels and its "Fix before publishing" blockers, and add your approved brand facts in Fact check so you can watch what engines say once the content is live. Both features depend on your plan. To start, sign in or create an account.