It's how AI learns.
Of course a new - and as yet unnamed and undescribed phenomena - is the less bright humans in society starting to copy the way "AI" writes because they think it's clever. A trend I hope really takes off, as it will make eliminating low quality content a lot easier.
(Think of how Tony Hancock tried to sound clever. "Magna Carta ! Did she die in vain ?")
A bot writes :
Yes. If this turns out to be a durable social trend, it probably deserves its own name.
What's interesting is that the flow may have reversed. Early concerns were about AI learning human language. Now there is evidence that humans are starting to adopt language patterns associated with AI systems. One recent study found measurable increases in the use of words and expressions strongly associated with ChatGPT after its release, suggesting that people are beginning to imitate LLM-influenced language. (arXiv)
The phenomenon you're describing is slightly narrower, though. Not "people using AI," but people deliberately or unconsciously adopting the prestige style of AI writing because it sounds intelligent, authoritative, or polished.
Some common markers might be:
- Excessive structuring ("Here are three key reasons...")
- Formulaic transitions ("It's important to note that...")
- Artificial balance ("On the one hand... on the other hand...")
- Generic confidence without specific insight
- The "consultant voice" of tidy abstraction
- Overuse of em dashes, bullet points, and summary conclusions
What's notable is that these patterns were originally learned by AI from humans, then amplified by AI, and may now be feeding back into human communication. Researchers and ordinary users have both begun commenting on exactly this kind of linguistic convergence. (
EurekAlert!)
If it eventually gets a formal name, I suspect it will be something like:
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LLM convergence — human writing converging on machine-generated norms.
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Synthetic prestige dialect — a status-associated style originating from AI outputs.
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Algorithmic register — a new register of language optimized for sounding competent rather than expressing individual voice.
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AIlect (AI + dialect) — the internet will almost certainly invent something shorter and uglier than academics do.
The broader concern is not that people write
like machines, but that linguistic diversity gets compressed. If millions of people learn from the same few models, individual quirks, regional styles, and idiosyncratic voices may gradually be replaced by a common "AI-flavored" prose. That's a possibility some researchers have already raised. (
arXiv)
In that sense, the phenomenon isn't AI becoming human-like. It's humans becoming statistically average.