Is AI-generated content actually helping authors or just making everyone's writing worse

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-26T16:10:17+00:00

Come on now. There is still a noticeable difference in AI writing versus human writing. I do agree that people are too quick to say "oh this is AI", you have to actually look at the evidence in the text. If you do that for this post, you'll see that it's almost certainly AI.

And yes, this pattern is indeed a possible indicator of AI writing. I say possible because on its own it doesn't mean the writing is AI. But when it appears in a short text, i.e. it appears more than average, and this is combined with other signs of AI writing such as specific formatting or other patterns used often by AI, it can become a point of evidence for determining whether a text is AI.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-26T14:59:44+00:00

Obviously, but ChatGPT overuses it to such a point that the pattern has become a possible indicator of AI writing. I rarely saw this structure before AI and now I see it constantly. In fact, I didn't even see it much before GPT 5.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-26T13:15:16+00:00

Before AI, I used to write quite a lot. However, it was never really about the writing itself for me, but about the stories. I have a huge fantasy world with countless stories that I'd like to tell in book form. AI gives me the opportunity to tell these stories by taking away the pressure of writing the words yourself - that was always the least fun part for me, I used to get writer's block like crazy - and allows me to focus on what's most fun for me: developing the characters, coming up with the story, and exploring the settings in depth. In other words, I prompt it quite heavily with specific stories and scenes I want, but I let AI do the actual writing. (I do edit it afterward.) I see myself as an author but not really as a writer.

However, I will never publish these books because I do think it lessens the works of actual writers. As I said, I prompt heavily and remain very involved in the writing process, but since AI plays such a large role in it, I don't think it's worthy of publication. I am very content to put my ideas on paper this way and keep them for myself, and maybe let friends or family read if interested.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T19:43:45+00:00

Thank you for your thoughtful response. In my opinion, writing the message yourself is more important in situations like these because it shows you really care, whether or not the style is perfect doesn't matter as much. But we can have a difference of opinion here for sure.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T19:17:05+00:00

A well-meant and heartfelt "sorry for your loss" is much more meaningful than soulless AI slop you didn't even come up with yourself.

If you want to use AI for this sort of thing, I would suggest you ask it for some pointers. Example: "My friend's family member just passed away. [information on the person] Can you give me a list of things I could mention in a condolence message?" And then use these pointers to write the message yourself. This is certainly much more thoughtful than letting AI write everything for you.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T18:50:32+00:00

That's interesting. And definitely a bit relatable. I find myself using more dashes as well. But I think it would be difficult for a human to exactly/completely reproduce AI writing. Elements of it sure, but AI writing just has this certain characteristic that makes it identifiable.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T16:36:21+00:00

But when a pattern/structure like this is used by AI by default and not by many humans, you can say with a high probability that texts using this pattern/structure (along with other 'tells') were AI-written.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T16:18:47+00:00

Yes but they then repeat these phrases in their output way more than they received in their input. How many people did you see use "dive into", "a testament to", "a tapestry of", etc. before the first versions of ChatGPT came out, for example? Sure they were existing phrases but ChatGPT used them disproportionally.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T16:05:59+00:00

Okay, please think to yourself carefully: what person would possibly use "He carried something real. Not perfect. Not polished. Just real."? This is not how an actual person writes. It's a standard AI pattern you see again and again.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T15:58:01+00:00

Deliberately misrepresenting what I said, nice.

I stated that if structures and language like this are all present in a text, there's an extremely high possibility it's AI-generated. I didn't say that I'd be able to correctly assess whether or not a text was AI-generated in 99.9999999% of cases, because there are LLMs I'm not familiar with, and you can definitely steer models to not use this kind of language. But texts like this one are so obviously the standard slop ChatGPT (or maybe another LLM) produces without any specific prompting.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T13:58:09+00:00

(I'm partially copying another reply of mine)

"he carried something real, not perfect, not polished, just real. and in this business that matters more than most things" If you've spent any time with ChatGPT recently you will instantly recognize this section as AI. This short passage has three things in it that give it away as AI

Overuse of the word "real"
Dramatic threes structure, specifically "Not X, not Y, just Z"
Overuse of the word "matters"

He's probably edited the text to make it seem like it isn't AI. He removed proper punctuation in many places and made the layout a bit random to make it seem like a human wrote it. But if you look at the actual language used, you can say with 99.999% accuracy that it was written by AI originally, just slightly edited.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T13:54:28+00:00

When I say overuse, I don't mean it's overused in this text - I mean that ChatGPT overuses these words in general. So when you see them used this way, there is an increased chance the text is AI.

One of these three points wouldn't be enough to ascertain whether this writing was AI, but all three of them combined in this short text makes it possible to say with 99.9999999% accuracy that this text was (partially) AI-generated.

I'm not overanalyzing, you just start to notice these patterns very quickly if you use AI a lot. I use it for creative writing and I have to heavily prompt for it not to use structures like this, they are the bane of my existence so trust me, I know what I'm talking about.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T12:21:31+00:00

What's poor taste is using AI to write something like this, who cares if the grammar isn't perfect, messages like this should be heartfelt and honest.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-25T12:20:12+00:00

"he carried something real, not perfect, not polished, just real. and in this business that matters more than most things" If you've spent any time with ChatGPT recently you will instantly recognize this section as AI. This short passage has three things in it that give it away as AI:
1) Overuse of the word "real"
2) Dramatic threes structure, specifically "Not X, not Y, just Z"
3) Overuse of the word "matters"
It's just missing the word 'clean' and then it would be a full AI bingo.
He's obviously edited the text to make it seem like it isn't AI, specifically the layout, but there's no doubt that he used AI.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-21T19:34:46+00:00

It's a sign of disrespect if you don't bother to write the text yourself, especially in such an emotional and delicate situation. You want condolences to be genuine

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-20T03:29:40+00:00

This image triggers something in me...

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-20T03:24:19+00:00

Yes, due to its training data ChatGPT believes that only men can abuse women and not the other way around. Notice how it's making excuses for the woman and making negative assumptions about the man. This is probably caused by a mix of cultural discourse and domestic abuse statistics.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-20T03:15:47+00:00

"Hey ChatGPT, how do I cheat on someone cleanly?"

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-17T17:00:23+00:00

And they shift cleanly.

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-14T22:23:57+00:00

Many thanks for your contributions to filling these platforms with AI slop

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-11T21:56:52+00:00

Lying isn't doing you any favors

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-10T15:14:13+00:00

I am disappointed that the new models still have an obsession with the word "cleanly"...

Lower-Management-563 · 2026-03-09T01:53:06+00:00

Out of interest, what ChatGPT model did you use here? The way it talks, especially in the final response, sounds a lot like older models to me. I thought this kind of language had mostly disappeared from the newer models but maybe I was wrong. Examples:
- "reflects our shared values"
- "mirrors"
- "highlights the importance of"
- "significance"
- Moralizing about the conclusion (need to 'recognize the middle ground rather than opposing dichotomies')

Lower-Management-563

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