As AI makes our lives easier, we see more and more of it. This is not to shame anyone who uses AI. These are just a few tells that you can use to know if something is AI, so you can say, “Hey, this is probably AI!” and then do nothing else. Know that I often use AI-generated READMEs and summarizations for my own ease. These are some observations I’ve noticed more and more within the past year.
It’s not just X, It’s Y!
As I’ve read more and more content online I’ve noticed this sentence structure more and more often. I hadn’t noticed this before a couple of months ago. So, maybe more and more people are generating summaries with AI that use this sentence structure. Personally, I’m sick of it already.
📝 Emojis
Asking ChatGPT to generate a markdown file with a list of topics is an easy way to prove this one. It will often give you a title with an emoji next to it. I don’t think anybody would go out of their way to mark EVERY topic with a custom emoji for something such as a summary of what you think about B2B SaaS tools, like I often see on LinkedIn. Honestly, I enjoy the emojis on most lists of topics. It provides a visual cue of what the topic is in your peripheral vision, something that does a better job than a word or two about the topic. The only problem is having the correct emoji for your topic.
The em dash
I remember using an em dash all the way back in freshman year of high school for an English paper (~7 years ago). It was even then I was worried the teacher might think I was copying a source from the internet. It wasn’t something I was taught but had picked up from reading articles online. So, for it to be a telltale sign of AI use today doesn’t surprise me at all.
I caution myself using it now for that reason and instead use a stupid amount of parenthesis for when I want to make a sidepoint during a sentence (like how I did right here).