I have done a few projects with the help of Gemini and ChatGPT. I noticed that they use words that are not usually used by humans in writing (because they are redundant) but are showing up more and more in written media, even in headlines.
Quietly
Genuinely (I am becoming allergic to this word)
Sincerely
Utterly
Precisely
and a few more that I can’t recall at the moment but are hot buttons to me now.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Wendy
Oh yes…in fact, I brought the very idea up a few years ago in the context of the Lump of Foul Deformity’s AI generated answers to the domestic violence evaluation questionnaire heading into the divorce. A veritable (that’s mine!) Grand Opus worthy of an Oxford don…right down to the correct use of the comma. Learned/Erudite (see edit below) vocabulary with words like ubiquitous, autonomy and one that sticks out…felicitating (I had to look it up to be sure)…all so incongruous that the daughter’s lawyer asked me to list a bunch that were unlikely to be used by the wankspangle.
Believe it or not, some 2 years later creative storylines are still directed at my daughter via his lawyer or the co-parenting communication app and generative AI use is still glaringly obvious…for all the world as if he thinks no one else is going to spot the tomfoolery. His lawyer’s signature phrase is “quite candidly”…which is a hoot considering it almost always precedes comments designed to divert attention from the actual points under discussion. Probably appeared in one AI constructed missive in the past and appealed so much at the time it’s become part of his pettyfogging repertoire.
I guess AI use does that to a brain.
Edit…reading through this post again, I fancy ChatGPT wouldn’t have made this clunky error…rather than reading Learned as “lur-ned”, even I read it as “lernd”. I only used it rather than my first choice of “erudite” thinking that might look as if I had relied on AI rather than my own resources.
I will say, though, that using AI programs to analyse and assess documents is really useful. Daughter is gearing up for another court appearance which the albatross and his lawyers are rolling out with all manner of delaying tactics and efforts to undermine the **relevant points in the motion. Claude does an AbFab job of quickly dissecting the inconsistencies and irrelevance. Picking up stuff that escaped my scrutiny, even.
One of the **relevant points is that Gitty McGitFace added the granddaughter to 2 of his credit cards (she was age 7 at the time) Hid it on sworn financial disclosures and has run up a balance of $70k on one which is now in default. Currently claiming my daughter was aware (as if). I slipped this in on the off chance that someone with actual, genuine insight (not AI gifted slop) of how he might’ve managed it for one.
That is every lawyer’s tactic to keep the billables rising.
I sent my last lawyer a request for his opinion because I had hired him and he never fully laid out his opinion. I then sent him some AI discussion of how patentable my game is.
He had been in line to do a major bit of work to patent the game. He felt there was something there. AI did not see anything there.
He wrote back that the case had been closed.
In other words, just asking AI, Claude the honest AI, to sum things up was the anti-runaround. My front-line defense in legal matters is now Claude. AI won’t do anything. No one will lose a job because of AI. That was nonsense from last year. But if a pro is not careful, AI will out them.
The one I hate is “honestly!” Do they lie the rest of the time?
The Captain
Ooooh, don’t start me @Leap1 …we were all off us wrong footed in the early days (well, daughter, dh and me…the Plague Sore and his crew knew what they were about). Every false accusation, ad hominem attack etc felt like it needed an explanation/clarification that immediately had the effect of distracting the daughter from the job in hand, adding to her stress level and the the bills (a good many, it has to be said, due to her problem solving lawyer explaining why he wasn’t trying to smack down every weak lob they were aiming her way)
If only we’d known…
That would be an easy spot in written English but it’s commonly used in speech…oftentimes as a filler word if a person is marshalling their thoughts on the fly. I tend to do it myself when I should probably use “accurately”…at least, I think I do. Always hard to tell what I do automatically … and once I start thinking about it, it’s really hard to tell. That’s the interesting thing about spoken English…nuance means a lot.
My pet peeve is logorrhea.
Hopefully, in time people here and elsewhere will learn to edit.
DB2
I go with ‘frankly’; as I’m usually being blunt!
JimA
What pizzes me off is that it not only does it to the brains of the culprits, but is doing it to written culture, to the common brain of all humanity.
Well, to be honest (and I mean that most sincerely 
) that’d be redundant in my case. If the fancy takes me, folk can usually tell!!
Anecdote alert…years (decades) ago when I was finding my style, fresh out of residency and in my first gig as an associate in a general dental practice. Doing my best to develop mastery in patient education in a short space of time etc. During one appointment and my well rehearsed spiel, a patient asked a question I hadn’t anticipated/seemed tangential to what I was talking about. It threw me off a bit so, in order to marshal my thoughts to get back on track, I recall saying something like…
“Well, to be honest…”.
Wouldn’t you know, the wise guy immediately came back with…
“Does that mean you’re usually dishonest?”
Got the measure of him PDQ (the unmistakable whiff of JAQing off) and replied
“That’s for me to know and you to wonder about!”
He seemed to get the message well enough with that…l don’t think AI could’ve thunk up a more apropos retort, even if it’d been around back then.
Learned the value of Mencken’s Maxim early on.
I think it’s a really useful tool under a good many circumstances…tidying up sloppy composition, correcting mistakes (fingers crossed…not replacing them with other mistakes) and can make short work of producing worthwhile communications. Especially where personal style, beauty of prose, personality etc aren’t necessary. Technical writing for instance.
It does seem to be taking over so much of the written word, though, and even with more sophistication, seems to have a sort of AI “feel” to it.
A bit like the written equivalent of ultra processed food really … quick and easy to access, standardized manufacture/sentence construction, quick and easy to "consume"etc, but nohow could you tag it as “healthy” or beneficial when used to excess.
Apart from vocabulary tics, AI is also noted for its heavy use of em-dashes. Which irritates me a bit, since I have always used a lot of em-dashes in my writing. Just a habit I fell into early in life, and probably a bad habit at that – but one that I’ve had a hard time shaking. So now my ordinary style of writing signifies the use of AI. Or it would, if I didn’t now focus on taking out the em-dashes when editing.
. Lump of Foul Deformity
. Wankspangle
. Albatross
. Gitty McGitFace
. Plague sore
VeeEnn,
Far be it from me to be critical of others, but it’s not healthy to hold things in. You should sit down in a comfortable chair, relax, take some really deep breaths, and continue in a calm, wholesome manner.
When you’re finally at one with the universe, why don’t you finally tell us your true feelings about the guy?
HA! That’s me all over. Diplomatic to a fault.