"Words like "delve," "underscore," and "intricate" have become a kind of AI accent. Small but reliable signals that a machine had a hand in the draft, at least for people who pay attention to these things. Once I was alerted to it, I couldn't stop seeing it. Delve kept jumping out at me, and I felt a small, smug satisfaction each time I noticed it. "Ah ha! You used ChatGPT..." It was like spotting a hidden watermark."
"As an aside, I felt a kind of moral squeamishness about the use of generative AI here, as if I were cutting a corner I shouldn't—like being caught smuggling notes into an exam. I find this instinctive reaction interesting, especially since the whole point of these tools is productivity, and their value ostensibly lies in speeding up the scaffolding around the thinking rather than replacing the thinking itself. In that light, my hesitation feels almost old-fashioned, maybe even a little generational."
Certain words, such as 'delve,' 'underscore,' and 'intricate,' frequently appear in generative AI outputs, forming a recognizable AI accent. ChatGPT inserted 'delve' while tightening a paragraph, and a data scientist identified the occurrence as a classic AI fingerprint. The insertion prompted moral unease, likened to cutting corners, despite the productivity intent of the tools. The value of the tools is framed as speeding up scaffolding around thinking rather than replacing thinking. Similar linguistic fingerprints were noticed in established journalists' work, yet emerging evidence suggests those journalists likely did not use generative AI.
Read at Apaonline
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