AI Press Release Polisher

Press releases follow a different rulebook

A press release isn't a blog post or a marketing email — it has its own load-bearing conventions: a dateline, an inverted-pyramid structure that front-loads the most newsworthy fact, at least one attributed quote, and boilerplate company language at the close. A language model asked to "write a press release" will usually hit those structural beats, because they're well represented in training data. What it often gets wrong is the register — press releases read differently from ad copy. They are supposed to sound like news, not like a pitch, even though the underlying goal is promotional.

This tool is built for that specific gap: taking an AI-drafted release that has the right bones but the wrong voice, and tightening the language so it reads like something a wire service or a reporter's inbox would take seriously.

What AI drafts tend to get wrong in a release

• Superlative overload: "groundbreaking," "revolutionary," "game-changing" stacked in the first paragraph. Wire editors and journalists are trained to discount this language on sight, and it reads as unpolished rather than exciting.
• Quotes that sound like nobody talks: AI-generated executive quotes often restate the headline in slightly different words instead of adding a real opinion, reaction, or piece of context a person would actually say out loud.
• Buried lede: the actual news — a funding round, a product launch, a partnership — sometimes lands in paragraph three instead of sentence one, which is backwards for the inverted-pyramid format editors expect.
• Generic boilerplate: a company "About" paragraph that could describe a hundred other companies, missing the specific detail that would help an editor understand who is actually issuing the release.
• Inconsistent tense and formality: drafts sometimes drift between present and past tense, or between formal wire-style prose and casual marketing phrasing, within the same document.

The structure this tool respects

A press release rewrite should never rearrange the parts that carry legal or factual weight — the dateline, the company name, quoted attributions, and any figures tied to a specific disclosure. The polish here targets sentence-level phrasing and tone: trimming inflated adjectives, tightening the lede so the news comes first, and making quotes sound like something a real executive or spokesperson would say rather than a paraphrase of the headline.

It keeps the inverted pyramid intact — most newsworthy information first, supporting detail and context after, boilerplate last — because that structure exists for a practical reason: editors and readers often stop reading partway through, and the release needs to work even if only the first two paragraphs get read.

How to use the Press Release Polisher

1. Paste your AI-drafted release into the editor above, dateline and boilerplate included.
2. Run the polish and read the result against your original, paragraph by paragraph.
3. Check every quote against what the named person actually said or approved — never publish a quote a tool generated without sign-off from the person it's attributed to.
4. Verify names, titles, dates, and figures are unchanged from your source material.
5. Confirm the lede still leads with your most newsworthy fact, not a rewritten version of your headline.
6. Send the final version through your normal legal or PR review before distribution.

What this tool won't do for you

It won't fabricate a quote, invent a statistic, or decide what your news actually is — those are editorial and legal decisions that stay with you. It also won't format your release for a specific wire service's submission requirements, which vary by distributor. Treat this as a language and structure pass, not a substitute for a PR professional's review before something goes out under your company's name.

For general AI-drafted business writing outside the press release format, the AI Humanizer covers broader tone and voice work.

A quick before-and-after

A typical unedited AI opening reads: "[Company] is thrilled to announce a groundbreaking new partnership that will revolutionize the way customers experience [product]." It leads with the company's feelings, not the news, and the adjectives do the work the facts should be doing. A polished version leads with the actual event: "[Company] today announced a partnership with [partner] to bring [specific capability] to [specific audience], beginning [date]." The second version gives an editor everything they need in one sentence — who, what, and when — without asking them to take the company's word for how significant it is.

The same logic applies to quotes. "We are excited about this exciting new chapter," said [Name], [Title] — restates the headline and says nothing new. A stronger quote adds a detail only that person could offer: context on why the decision was made, what it means for customers, or what changes starting on a specific date. That specificity is usually the difference between a quote a reporter keeps and one they cut.

Boilerplate deserves the same scrutiny as the lede

It's easy to treat the closing "About" paragraph as an afterthought, copied unchanged from the last release. But a boilerplate paragraph is often the only context a reporter unfamiliar with your company reads before deciding whether the story is worth covering. A polished boilerplate names what the company actually does, in plain language, without repeating the superlatives already trimmed from the lede — and it stays current, since an outdated funding figure or old headquarters location in your boilerplate is a small but real credibility problem when it surfaces in a published story.

Formality without stiffness

Press releases sit in an odd middle ground: more formal than a blog post, but not as dense as a legal filing. AI drafts sometimes overcorrect toward stiffness, producing sentences that are technically formal but hard to read at a glance — long clauses, passive constructions, and a preference for abstract nouns over concrete verbs. A polish pass should tighten those sentences without making the release sound casual: shorter sentences, active verbs, and a clear subject in every clause, while still keeping the third-person, dateline-first format that wire services and news desks expect. The goal is a release an editor can skim in ten seconds and still walk away knowing exactly what happened.