Do we need a term (probably German) for the anxiety that one's work might look like it was generated by machines?
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@themadhatter True! We don't hear much about the parrot anymore. We should bring it back -- a useful metaphor.
@JulianOliver this one is not bad either:
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This article shared by @slackline has some strongly-related fight in it https://www.theringer.com/2025/08/20/pop-culture/em-dash-use-ai-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-google-gemini
@JulianOliver
> always used the em dashYeah – crowds blame humans for using what the #siliconiac had stolen.
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@JulianOliver
I just finished a ~30-page white-paper, and afterwards ran it through Claude asking whether there were any constructions or anything that it would flag as AI-written. It caught a couple of things which were a little stilted... I re-wrote them in more direct language. So, yeah, I'd certainly rather nobody thought that my writing was AI-generated, and I'm willing to do a little extra work to try to make sure of that.@woody @JulianOliver So to avoid coming off as AI generated, you put your writing through a chatbot?
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@JulianOliver This is a great listen, specifically about the much-maligned em dash and the em dash backlash: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/658-the-em-dash/
@scott Thanks! I will listen to it today.
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@woody @JulianOliver So to avoid coming off as AI generated, you put your writing through a chatbot?
@jairajdevadiga @woody Admittedly I also find the strategy perplexing.
Bill is your concern that readers might put your text through an 'AI detection' tool and deem it machine made, or that a human might read it and deem it so?
Both?
If more the latter, might not soliciting feedback from people be a more fruitful approach?
If the former, I worry Claude would be so poisoned with bias you may risk giving a genAI stink to the text where it otherwise may have none.
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This article shared by @slackline has some strongly-related fight in it https://www.theringer.com/2025/08/20/pop-culture/em-dash-use-ai-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-google-gemini
@JulianOliver @slackline As a human novelist, I intend to keep using em dashes to my heart's content. I've used them for 30+ years, they have served me well, and I'm not gonna let AI ruin them for me!
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Do we need a term (probably German) for the anxiety that one's work might look like it was generated by machines?
@JulianOliver you'll have to pry my em dash from my cold dead hands - I love them and cannot imagine writing without them.
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Do we need a term (probably German) for the anxiety that one's work might look like it was generated by machines?
@JulianOliver like the indians who thought their soul was stolen by the camera taking pictures?
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@woody @JulianOliver So to avoid coming off as AI generated, you put your writing through a chatbot?
@jairajdevadiga
I asked it to flag things which appeared to it as though it might have been AI-generated. It didn't re-write anything or suggest changes. That would be exactly defeating the purpose. -
I heard from someone near me today that to make your work appear less like it was machine-generated the emerging rule is that you should not use the 'em dash', nor write in paragraphs, rather one text block.
I have prior heard another say that text summaries at the end of an article are seen as indication of genAI use, as is text free of typos.
Has anyone heard of other references to behaviour-change born of such anxiety?
@JulianOliver I have seen people accused of using LLMs because they write in all-lowercase. The accuser claimed that this was an attempt to avoid detection for using an LLM by promoting it to write in an unusual style. To someone who’s sufficiently paranoid even writing unlike an LLM is proof of LLM use.
I’ve been accused of using LLMs due to saying that someone was partially correct before disagreeing with the rest of what they said, as well as for using five-syllable words.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
