{"id":597345,"date":"2026-04-21T09:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T09:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/597345\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T09:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T09:56:12","slug":"its-not-just-one-thing-its-another-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/597345\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s not just one thing \u2014 it’s another thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, things are not just one thing \u2014 they\u2019re also another thing. This sentence construction (\u201cIt\u2019s not just this \u2014 it\u2019s that\u201d) has become so common in AI-generated writing that now, it\u2019s no longer just a clue that a piece of writing may be synthetic \u2014 it\u2019s almost a guarantee.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I was not just intrigued when I saw a Barron\u2019s report<\/a> about how this sentence construction has dramatically increased in corporate communications \u2014 I was deeply amused. The report didn\u2019t just remark on the prevalence of this phrasing in corporate communications \u2014 it scanned the market intelligence firm AlphaSense\u2019s database to find how often this phrasing was used in corporate news releases, earnings reports, and government filings.<\/p>\n

According to Barron\u2019s, this sentence construction isn\u2019t just a quirk of corporate communications \u2014 it\u2019s an epidemic, more than quadrupling from about 50 mentions in 2023, to over 200 uses in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Barron’s (opens in a new window)<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the data that tells us this \u2014 I also found some examples from the past year:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2025, AI won\u2019t just be a tool; it will be a collaborator.\u201d (Cisco<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future of autonomy isn\u2019t just on the horizon; it\u2019s already unfolding.\u201d (Accenture<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cDevOps teams are managing not just deployments, but also security compliance and cloud spending.\u201d (Workday<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cThese systems aren\u2019t just executing tasks; they\u2019re starting to learn, adapt, and collaborate.\u201d (McKinsey<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Bill founded Microsoft, he envisioned not just a software company, but a software factory, unconstrained by any single product or category.\u201d (Satya Nadella in a Microsoft<\/a> blog post.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just about building tools for specific roles or tasks. It\u2019s about building tools that empower everyone to create their own tools.\u201d (The same Microsoft blog post.)<\/p>\n

\u201cJust imagine if all 8 billion people could summon a researcher \u2026 not just to get information but use their expertise to get things done that benefit them.\u201d (Still, that same Microsoft blog post.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just coincidental that generative AI tools use this phrase a lot \u2014 it\u2019s a reflection of our writing, which these tools were trained on (without our permission, might I add, which is not just insulting to writers \u2014 it\u2019s a violation). And it\u2019s not just this sentence construction \u2014 it\u2019s also em-dashes that are now considered a tell for AI-generated text.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a funny trend \u2014 it\u2019s symbolic of how reliant these companies have become on AI (though we cannot say for certain if the above missives were AI-assisted). So next time you see a sentence like that, remember that it\u2019s not just a catchy construction \u2014 it might be a symptom of something greater.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prevalence of AI content is growing rapidly and \u2018it\u2019s not just X, it\u2019s Y\u2019 is a tic preferred by 2025-era frontier language models,\u201d Max Spero, CEO of AI detection tool Pangram<\/a>, told TechCrunch. \u201cThe base rate of occurrence for this sentence structure is high enough that its existence is no smoking gun for AI use, but it\u2019s clear that press releases and company documents, writing driven by requirements and not emotion, are seeing an even higher incidence of AI use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Updated, 4\/20\/26, 6:00 PM EST, with quote from Pangram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes, things are not just one thing \u2014 they\u2019re also another thing. This sentence construction (\u201cIt\u2019s not just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,1873,108,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-597345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-generative-ai","12":"tag-social-media","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}