How to use an AI CV improver without making things up (UK)

An AI CV improver, enhancer or rewriter can tidy your wording, tighten your bullets and fix inconsistent formatting. What it cannot do is know what you really did. A safer way to use one is to give it only facts you can stand behind, tell it not to add anything, ask it to list every change, and then check the result line by line against your original. Remove your personal details before you paste, and keep the layout plain so that recruitment software can read it.

This guide applies whether you use a general AI assistant or a dedicated CV tool. What matters is what the tool does with your facts. It is written for UK job seekers and draws on UK employers, universities and public bodies, listed under Sources.

What a CV improver, enhancer or rewriter actually does

These tools do three different jobs, and the risk rises as you move down the list.

1. Tidying. Fixing spelling, grammar, tense and inconsistent dates. Lower risk, as long as nothing factual changes (a tool can alter a date as easily as fix it).
2. Editing. Making your own sentences clearer, shorter and stronger. Medium risk, because a rewording can change the meaning, for example turning "helped with" into "led".
3. Generating. Writing lines you did not give it. High risk, because the tool is filling gaps with its best guess.

Careers advisers and employer bodies draw the same line. Prospects, the graduate careers site, says it is best to use AI to enhance or edit your documents, not to create them entirely (Prospects). The Institute of Student Employers (ISE) tells students to use AI to enhance, not create, and to include only skills and achievements they can genuinely evidence (ISE).

The reason is how the technology works. The Law Society explains that generative AI creates responses by predicting patterns in text rather than understanding it, so an output can sound confident and still be wrong, and tools are often built to make a guess rather than admit they do not know (The Law Society). A CV line that reads smoothly is not evidence that it is true.

What UK employers and careers advisers say

Attitudes are mixed, and they vary by employer.

• Many graduate employers accept AI help. In its Student Recruitment Report 2026, published on 14 October 2026 and based on 155 employers that recruit students and graduates, ISE says employers increasingly accept the use of AI in the hiring process, particularly to help write CVs, cover letters and applications. It adds that candidates are usually not allowed to use AI during online assessments, interviews or assessment centres (ISE).
• Some set firm rules. The Civil Service tells applicants not to use AI to inflate or invent their skills and experiences. Applicants are asked to confirm that the information they give is true and accurate, and applications can be rejected where AI is used inappropriately (Civil Service Careers). The University of Edinburgh's careers service warns that ignoring an employer's guidance can mean a rejected application, or the role being withdrawn if AI use is detected later (Edinburgh).
• Recruiters are seeing more of the same. In two surveys run by the job board CV-Library in March 2026, of 424 UK recruiters and employers and 1,067 candidates, 79% of recruiters reported an increase in AI-generated CVs and 81% said CVs now lack personality or distinction (CV-Library). This is a commercial survey, not peer-reviewed research.
• Some employers monitor. The CIPD's 2026 resourcing report found that 27% of organisations that attempted to recruit said candidates made "excessive" use of generative AI in applications. Of the 35% of employers that attempt to monitor its use, 75% have rejected candidates for using AI (CIPD). That 75% is a share of the employers who monitor, not of all employers.

The practical conclusion is that polish is not the goal. A CV that is accurate, specific and in your own voice is safer and more likely to stand out than one that sounds like everyone else's.

Where an AI rewrite goes wrong

• Invented or inflated achievements. Tools add percentages, team sizes and senior verbs because they make a line sound stronger. Bright Network, a UK graduate careers brand, notes that AI tools often make up their own numbers (Bright Network). The University of Bath lists "creating experiences or qualifications you don't possess" and "overstating achievements beyond their actual scope" as things to avoid (Bath).
• Generic wording. A rewrite can swap your specific detail for buzzwords. Edinburgh says recruiters can spot an absence of context (Edinburgh), and Manchester warns that without information the tool is likely to produce generic content (Manchester).
• Keyword stuffing. Repeating the same phrase over and over does not help. Bristol's careers service advises against hidden or repeated keywords and shows how a natural mention beats repetition (Bristol).
• American spelling. Edinburgh warns that some tools are set to American English, so run your own spell check (Edinburgh). Lancaster says American spellings can be a giveaway that the text is not your own (Lancaster).
• Broken layout. A rewrite can introduce tables, columns, icons or text boxes that recruitment software struggles to read. There is a short checklist below.
• Lost details. A tighter version can quietly drop a number, a date or a project. Our guide to tailoring a CV with AI covers this failure in more depth.

Start with your evidence, not the tool

The best protection is to decide what is true before the tool sees anything. The University of Bath recommends starting with your own writing and then using AI as an editor (Bath). Do the same, one role at a time, and write an evidence sheet in plain notes.

• What you did. In your own words, in the first person.
• How much, how often, for whom. A number, a frequency or a rough size.
• What changed. The result: something faster, cheaper, cleaner, calmer or more accurate.
• How sure you are. Mark each figure as certain, approximate or not sure. An approximate figure should stay approximate.

The National Careers Service's CV advice covers work placements, volunteering and paid jobs, and suggests describing what you did in a few lines using the STAR method (National Careers Service). The Civil Service suggests a similar routine for applications: write down examples with details first, then ask the tool to help structure them (Civil Service Careers). If you cannot think of examples, the prompts in our guide to tailoring a CV to a job description can help you dig out experience you left off.

Protect your personal data first

Your CV is full of personal data. The National Cyber Security Centre advised in 2023 that queries to public AI tools are visible to the organisation providing them and may be used to develop the service, and recommended not including sensitive information in them (NCSC). That post is several years old, and tools and settings differ by provider and plan, so check the current privacy terms of whichever tool you use.

As a minimum, take out your name, address, phone number, email address and profile links before you paste anything. Lancaster University's careers service says not to paste in your name, email, LinkedIn URL or address (Lancaster), and Manchester's example prompt uses an anonymised CV (Manchester). Put your details back in yourself afterwards. Our guide to an ATS-friendly CV has more on uploading a CV to online tools.

Set the rules in your prompt

Tell the tool what it may and may not do. Here is a prompt you can adapt. It is a starting point, not a guarantee, so the checks in the next section still apply.

Work in two passes. First ask for wording changes only. Then, if you want, ask about order and structure. Changing everything at once makes it harder to see what moved.

Check the result line by line

Treat the output as a draft written by someone who has never met you. For every line, ask:

• Is this true, exactly as written?
• Could I explain it for two minutes in an interview, without notes?
• Has any number, date, job title or employer changed?
• Has a skill, tool or qualification appeared that I did not give it?
• Does it still sound like me?

Put the original and the new version side by side, or use the compare function in your word processor, so that changes cannot hide. Manchester's careers service suggests asking whether the tool has made any assumptions or got anything wrong about you, and treating the AI's output as a draft rather than the finished product (Manchester).

It matters because claims can be checked. An employment lawyer quoted in The Guardian in March 2025 said a fabricated CV could be grounds for dismissal, and a recruiter in the same article said HR teams look through candidates' public social media, and that LinkedIn dates can contradict a CV (The Guardian). Under the Government's Baseline Personnel Security Standard, organisations verify a candidate's disclosed employment for at least the previous three years, and academic history or qualifications where applicable, and the standard lists false or unsubstantiated claims on a CV as a concern (GOV.UK). In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 covers dishonestly making a false representation, knowing it is or might be untrue or misleading, intending to make a gain or cause loss (legislation.gov.uk). Whether any particular CV line would count depends on the facts, and this guide is information, not legal advice.

Finally, check the employer's own position on AI before you apply. Some say what they accept in the job advert or the application form.

What a rewrite must not break

Recruitment software (applicant tracking systems, or ATS) reads your CV into fields. LSE Careers and the University of Bristol's careers service give broadly similar layout advice, and an AI rewrite should not undo it (LSE, Bristol):

• A single-column layout (both) and standard headings such as Experience and Education (LSE).
• No text boxes, icons or graphics (both), no tables (LSE), and no key information in headers or footers (LSE).
• A Word document or a PDF, unless the employer says otherwise. Bristol says Word is generally the most reliable choice, and LSE says Word is the safer option when in doubt.
• A clear, common font at size 11 or bigger (National Careers Service).
• Acronyms spelled out once (LSE).

Careers services disagree on how much ATS software actually rejects people. Prospects says an application that lacks keywords may be filtered out (Prospects), while Bristol says automatic rejection on content alone is very unlikely (Bristol). In the CV-Library surveys, 75% of candidates thought AI is used to screen CVs, but only 21% of recruiters said they use it for that (CV-Library). Clear formatting, and using the employer's own wording naturally where it is true of you, are the common ground. Do not chase a match score. Our ATS-friendly CV guide goes into detail.

A worked example

Here is how the difference looks on one line. The person, job and numbers are invented for illustration.

Fictional example: Sam, a warehouse operative. Sam's evidence sheet says: picks and packs online orders for a small furniture retailer, about two years; roughly 30 orders a shift (Sam is sure of "about 30", not a measured figure); showed one new starter how to pack fragile items in their first week; did not lead a team; did not measure error rates. The line on Sam's current CV is:

Responsible for picking and packing orders in a busy warehouse.

An AI rewrite that invents might return this:

Spearheaded fulfilment operations, cutting order errors by 35% and leading a team of six to hit record dispatch targets.

Checked against Sam's evidence sheet, it fails four ways. "Spearheaded" claims a seniority Sam never had. "35%" is a number Sam never gave. "A team of six" is a team Sam never led. "Record dispatch targets" describes targets that never existed. "Fulfilment operations" also hides the real job behind a buzzword.

The second version is shorter and less impressive on first glance, but Sam can defend every word of it, which is what an interviewer or a reference check will test.

Check your CV before you send it

Run the free CV scan, or try the free CV checker to catch missing dates, layout problems and thin evidence. Both are automated checks, not a verdict from an employer. If your CV needs a stronger summary at the top, see our CV personal profile examples, and for the skills section see our guide to skills for a CV. The free scan checks run in your browser. If you ask for AI help, the relevant text is sent to our AI providers to produce it. Your work is saved in this browser. During the final CV build, working material is held encrypted on our server. The finished CV is held encrypted for up to 30 minutes after completion, then deleted, or sooner once received by your browser. See the privacy page for provider handling and optional sharing.

FAQs

Is it OK to use AI to improve my CV?

Yes, in general, as long as every line is true and you can talk about it at interview. Some employers set their own rules on AI in applications, so check theirs first. The Civil Service, for example, asks applicants to confirm that the information they give is true and accurate.

What is the best AI for improving a CV?

There is no single best tool. A general AI assistant or a dedicated CV tool can both work if you give it only facts you can stand behind, tell it not to add anything, and check the result yourself. Judge a tool by what it does with your facts, not by how polished the output looks.

Will recruiters know my CV was improved with AI?

They may notice generic, similar-looking wording, and Prospects says some employers actively scan for AI-generated content. In a March 2026 CV-Library survey, 81% of recruiters said CVs now lack personality or distinction. Some employers also monitor AI use, so specific, accurate detail in your own voice is safer than polish.

Is it safe to paste my CV into an AI tool?

Treat it like any public service. The National Cyber Security Centre advised in 2023 against putting sensitive information into public AI tools, because queries are visible to the provider. Remove your name, address, phone number, email and links before you paste, and check the tool's current privacy settings.

How do I stop AI inventing things on my CV?

Give it a list of facts and tell it to use only those, ask it to flag anything it is unsure of instead of guessing, then compare the result with your original line by line. Delete anything you did not supply, including numbers, tools and job titles.

How Evident approaches this

Evident is an AI tool too, so the checks above apply to it as well. It asks up to five targeted questions to find the experience you may not have written down, and drafts wording only from your answers, which you approve line by line.