How to check AI work before you send it

By the end of this, you will have a quick “before you send it” checklist so nothing wrong or off-brand goes out with your name on it.

AI is a fast, capable assistant, but it can sound completely sure and still be wrong. It can invent a fact, misjudge your tone, or quietly carry an assumption you would never make. A 60-second check before you hit send catches almost all of this, and it keeps the trust you have built with the people you work with.

The trick is to make the check a habit rather than a debate. A short, fixed checklist does that.

What you will need

• Whatever AI helped produce the work, and the draft itself.
• Any AI chat tool if you want a second pair of eyes: Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.
• 15 to 25 minutes to adapt the checklist, then about a minute per piece of work from then on.

Step 1: Know what usually goes wrong

Most problems with AI work fall into a handful of buckets. Knowing them makes them easy to spot.

Facts and figures can be wrong, because AI sometimes makes things up with total confidence. This is often called a hallucination. Tone can be off, too formal, too casual, or not quite you. Details can be stale or generic. And now and then an answer carries an unfair assumption, a bias picked up from the huge pile of text the AI learned from.

What to expect: a clear sense of what to look for. The checklist below turns these into quick, concrete questions.

Step 2: Start from this checklist

Copy the checklist below. It is short on purpose, because a check you can do in a minute is one you will actually do. The parts in square brackets are for you to fill in.

Before you send it: a 60-second check

Accuracy
[ ] Every fact, figure, name, date, and quote checked against a trusted source.
[ ] Any link opened and confirmed it goes where it should.
[ ] Nothing stated as certain that you cannot back up.

Tone and brand
[ ] Sounds like you (or [company name]), not like a generic AI.
[ ] Right level of formality for who is receiving it.
[ ] No jargon, hype, or filler you would not normally use.

Fairness and sense
[ ] No unfair assumptions about people or groups.
[ ] Advice or claims are reasonable, not sweeping.
[ ] Reads well to someone outside your team.

Fit for purpose
[ ] Actually answers what was asked, with nothing missing.
[ ] Right length for the job.
[ ] No leftover placeholders like [square brackets] or "insert here".

Safe to share
[ ] No confidential or personal information included by accident.
[ ] You are happy to stand behind this with your name on it.

What to expect: a complete check you can run down in about a minute. It is built to be quick, not exhaustive, so it fits into a busy day.

Step 3: Adapt it to your work

Now make it yours. Some of these matter more in your world than others. A press release lives or dies on tone, a report on its numbers. Paste the checklist into an AI tool and let it tailor the emphasis.

Here is a "before you send it" checklist for reviewing AI-assisted work. Please
adapt it for someone who mostly produces [type of work, for example client
emails, reports, social posts] in a [your industry] setting. Keep it short, put
the most important checks first, and cut anything that does not apply.

[paste the checklist]

What to expect: a version weighted to what actually matters for your work. Read it through and drop anything that does not earn its place.

If it does not work: if it grows into a long form, reply with “Keep it to a quick 60-second check, not a full review process.”

Step 4: Use AI as a second reader

For anything important, you can ask an AI tool to check the work against your own list before you do the final read. Treat it as a helpful second reader, not the last word. You still make the call.

Please review the draft below as a careful editor. Flag anything that might be
factually wrong or that you cannot verify, any spot where the tone feels off for
a professional audience, and any assumption that seems unfair or too sweeping. List
what you find as short bullet points. Do not rewrite it.

[paste the draft]

What to expect: a short list of things worth a second look. Some flags will be genuine and some will not, so use your judgement. The point is to surface issues, not to hand over the decision.

Wrapping up

Keep the checklist somewhere you will see it, pinned near your screen or saved as a note you paste in. After a week or two it stops being a checklist and becomes instinct, and that is the goal.

Keep the human in charge: the checklist protects your name and your team’s trust, but it works because you are the one making the final call. Our guides on keeping the human in charge and fact-checking AI answers go deeper on why that last human read matters so much.