TL;DR for AI writing warning signs:
- Use of the em-dash (—)
- Parallel sentence structure (e.g. “It’s not just X, it’s Y”)
- Grouping things in threes or at least odd numbers
- Delineating line breaks with emojis
- Odd/unnatural verbiage
- Overuse of filler words (talking like your average LinkedIn post)
- Exaggerated and empty praise
- Weird analogies and similes
- Restating and overclarifying points
TL;DR for signs something was written by a human:
- Including anecdotes
- Written in the first person
- Tangents and nonlinear storytelling
For me the most obvious tell is using 16 paragraphs to say something that could have been said with 16 words.
You just described the last two decades of cooking/recipe websites.
Dr. Ian Malcom: “SEO ruins succinct writing, AI trains on bloated SEO ‘optimized’ text, AI produces bloated SEO-optimized output…”
I have ADHD and like en and em dashes. I’ve been known to use emoji points to make my 16 paragraphs easier to read.
Fortunately I think the constant personal tangents arr saving me
I get what you’re saying, but I’ll just clarify that my 16 paragraphs vs 16 words was about wordiness, not layout.
That’s because you’re probably not used to people from STEM areas who tend to be thorough rather than risk that some things might be mis- or not at all understood: the less one is sure about the level of knowledge or ability to keep up of those on the other side, the more thorough the explanation becomes.
Also the deeper you think about something the more elements there are to explain.
I have a STEM background myself and spent a good bit of my career writing (relatively poorly in my opinion) technical documentation. I understand what you’re saying and I guess I didn’t make my point very well.
I was hoping people would understand that I was referring to the enshitification of internet search results - where every search leads to pages of results of entire articles about very simple topics that say basically nothing. It seems obvious to be, though I admit I’m making an assumption, that the vast majority of these articles are LLM generated fluff attempting to lure people to pages to generate ad revenue.
I find that a more human trait with writing.
People go on and on about nothing and have broken sentence fragments. AI tends to be “too clean”.