When Olivia Dreizen Howell was accused of sounding like an AI chatbot, her reaction was as human as it gets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking about it nonstop for weeks,\u201d says Howell, who co-founded an online divorce support network. \u201cI felt like I was being attacked. I was very upset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howell\u2019s supposed offense was an Instagram post<\/a> she shared the day after Christmas, reflecting on why the post-holiday emotional crash can feel so brutal. One follower left a public comment complaining that the post was obviously AI-generated\u2014it wasn\u2019t\u2014and \u201cpretty off-putting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt invasive,\u201d Howell says. She clarified in the comments that the post had been written by her without any machine assistance. \u201cI put my blood, sweat, and tears into my work,\u201d she says, \u201cand I wanted people to know it was indeed a false statement.\u201d<\/p>\n Across the internet, as tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini become part of everyday life, people are increasingly informing others that their words come across as AI output. You can practically feel the disdain through the screen: \u201cDid AI write that?\u201d It\u2019s not really a question\u2014it\u2019s a way of ending a conversation by casting doubt on whether someone deserves to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s basically shorthand for, \u2018You don\u2019t sound human enough,\u2019 which is a pretty loaded accusation,\u201d says Stephanie Steele-Wren, a psychologist in Bentonville, Ark. \u201cIt taps into a much bigger cultural anxiety about authenticity, and whether or not we can still recognize a human voice when we hear or read one.\u201d The implication, she says, is clear: The person on the other end lacks intelligence, originality, and credibility\u2014and may not even be worth engaging with or trusting.<\/p>\n Why it stings<\/p>\n Large language models (LLMs) tend to write in recognizable ways\u2014AI hallmarks are certain constructions like \u201cIt\u2019s not just X, it\u2019s also Y,\u201d and overusing em dashes<\/a>. \u201cAI has certain habits,\u201d says Alex Kotran, co-founder and CEO of aiEDU, an education nonprofit focused on AI literacy. \u201cIt likes threes\u2014X, Y, and Z\u2014and it often has alliteration.\u201d Other so-called tells include overly tidy conclusions and unnaturally smooth transitions.<\/p>\n When you read something that sounds like it was generated by AI, \u201cyou feel like it\u2019s a politician speaking,\u201d says Caitlin Begg, a sociologist who focuses on technology’s effect on everyday life. \u201cIt\u2019s generally very long-winded, and it doesn\u2019t really take a hardened stance.\u201d In other words, it hedges instead of committing and avoids saying much of anything at all. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain part to it that feels soulless,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Being told you sound like AI, then, can feel oddly dehumanizing. \u201cThat\u2019s why the insult stings,\u201d Steele-Wren says. \u201cIt\u2019s not about quality. It\u2019s about identity. It suggests your voice is generic or interchangeable,\u201d and that hurts.<\/p>\n A desire for authenticity<\/p>\n The fact that people are accusing others of using AI to stand in for their own voice, whether it\u2019s true or not, speaks to cultural angst about this strange new machine-mediated world, Steele-Wren says. That\u2019s complicated by the fact that there\u2019s no reliable way to detect whether something was actually written by AI, plus ongoing anxiety about whether human effort still matters. When you can\u2019t confidently identify the human behind the words, she says, every interaction feels a little less grounded.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a real hunger right now for writing that feels unmistakably human, with all the quirks, oddly specific details, and little flashes of personality that AI can\u2019t quite mimic,\u201d she adds. \u201cHumans are naturally chaotic and idiosyncratic. AI is not.\u201d<\/p>\n Read More: Stop Letting AI Run Your Social Life<\/a><\/p>\n Some people\u2014in fear of being accused of using AI\u2014are purposely inserting grammatical errors or typos to make their prose look more human, experts say. \u201cYou can already see people adapting with more intentional messiness, more humor, and more specificity,\u201d Steele-Wren says. \u201cIt\u2019s a collective attempt to signal, \u2018A real person wrote this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Kotran has noticed that he\u2019s consciously not polishing his writing as much as he used to. That includes bidding farewell to the beleaguered em dash. \u201cYou’ll read my paragraphs sometimes, and I’ll just be using commas and commas and commas. I’m like, I know this isn’t really correct, but there are people who look at a piece of writing and go, \u2018Oh, it has an em dash\u2014it\u2019s been generated by AI,\u2019\u201d he says. He\u2019s even started to remove alliteration that once would have made him smile.<\/p>\n