\n<\/p>\n
Sometimes, things are not just one thing \u2014 they\u2019re also another thing. This sentence construction (\u201cIt\u2019s not just this \u2014 it\u2019s that\u201d) has become so common in AI-generated writing that now, it\u2019s no longer just a clue that a piece of writing may be synthetic \u2014 it\u2019s almost a guarantee.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why, I was not just intrigued when I saw a Barron\u2019s report<\/a> about how this sentence construction has dramatically increased in corporate communications \u2014 I was deeply amused. The report didn\u2019t just remark on the prevalence of this phrasing in corporate communications \u2014 it scanned the market intelligence firm AlphaSense\u2019s database to find how often this phrasing was used in corporate news releases, earnings reports, and government filings.<\/p>\n According to Barron\u2019s, this sentence construction isn\u2019t just a quirk of corporate communications \u2014 it\u2019s an epidemic, more than quadrupling from about 50 mentions in 2023, to over 200 uses in 2025.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the data that tells us this \u2014 I also found some examples from the past year:<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just coincidental that generative AI tools use this phrase a lot \u2014 it\u2019s a reflection of our writing, which these tools were trained on (without our permission, might I add, which is not just insulting to writers \u2014 it\u2019s a violation). And it\u2019s not just this sentence construction \u2014 it\u2019s also em-dashes that are now considered a tell for AI-generated text.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just a funny trend \u2014 it\u2019s symbolic of how reliant these companies have become on AI (though we cannot say for certain if the above missives were AI-assisted). So next time you see a sentence like that, remember that it\u2019s not just a catchy construction \u2014 it might be a symptom of something greater.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n