Artificial intelligence is increasingly influencing not only how people work, but also how they communicate, write, and express themselves in everyday life.
According to an Axios report, researchers are beginning to notice that AI-generated language patterns are subtly shaping human speech and writing habits as millions of people interact daily with chatbots, autocomplete systems, AI writing assistants, and content-generation tools. Linguists and communication experts say certain words, phrases, sentence structures, and conversational styles commonly produced by AI are gradually spreading into human communication.
One reason for this shift is the massive scale of AI-assisted communication. Students, professionals, marketers, customer-service agents, and social media users increasingly rely on AI tools for emails, presentations, reports, scripts, captions, and online posts. Researchers cited by Axios found that people exposed repeatedly to AI-generated text may unconsciously adopt the tone, vocabulary, and stylistic tendencies of these systems.
The University of Southern California study ("The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models", arXiv:2502.11266v1 [cs.CL], Feb, 16, 2025) analyzed scientific journals, local news articles and social media and found writing style diversity dropped sharply after ChatGPT's release.
According to Morteza Dehghani, a USC professor who oversaw the study, tells Axios. People get used to this idealized, very predictable form of language, and even people who are not using it, in order to have that sense of powerful, influential writing, they start writing more like LLMs".
Alex Mahadevan, chief AI instructor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, tells Axios that AI writing is noticeably "soulless" and "mediocre", even though it is grammatically correct. "There's no art in it".
The trend is also raising broader cultural concerns about originality and authenticity.
Critics argue that as AI-generated language becomes more standardized, communication risks becoming flatter, more predictable, and less emotionally distinctive. Some educators and writers worry that overreliance on AI assistance could weaken critical thinking, personal storytelling, and creative experimentation.
Meanwhile, others argue that AI may simply accelerate existing historical patterns where technologies such as dictionaries, word processors, spell-checkers, and search engines have always influenced language evolution.
Emily Bender, a linguist at the University of Washington, said she does her "very best not to read any synthetic text". But "oftentimes people will send me something and I won't know".
For sure, AI use is on the rise, making it difficult for those seeking to avoid LLM-generated content. According to a 2025 Brookings survey, 32% of small businesses use AI for customer service and outreach, and 16% of individuals said they use LLMs for communication or social media.
Bender warns that chasing "ChatGPT level polish" dulls authentic voices and encourages what she likes to call the "LinkedIn average", or the bland corporate speech users on the networking site often use.
Mahadevan says he misses "good bad writing," in which prose is so poorly written that it's engaging and uniquely human. He added that he now tries to avoid the supposed telltale signs of AI in his writing, such as em dashes.
"I have been second-guessing myself, thinking, 'Well, sh*t, is someone going to think this was written with AI?'"
Bender reiterates, "There is value in the struggle of writing, because we learn to express ourselves, and we learn to do the thinking that happens as we're writing".
"Each time we choose not to do that, we are losing out, both individually and societally", she maintains.
Despite the concerns, many experts view the phenomenon as part of a natural adaptation process between humans and new technologies. Linguists note that language constantly evolves through interaction with media, institutions, and communication tools. AI systems themselves are trained on human language, meaning the relationship is increasingly becoming circular: humans shape AI language, and AI-generated language in turn influences human communication.
Researchers believe the long-term impact may not be the disappearance of human expression, but the emergence of new hybrid communication styles shaped by continuous collaboration between humans and machines.
Methinks, we shouldn't depend on AI to do our writing; more importantly, we must take ownership of the writing we do.
After all, the words we speak tell a story – of our individual identities, the diverse communities we inhabit, and the vibrant societies that shape us. They offer a unique lens through which we can explore the intricate tapestry of human thought, culture, and behavior.
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