MANY OF US believe that even though we exist firmly in the age of the AI chatbot, that we fleshy humans possess some innate quality that will always set us a step apart from what large language models are able to produce.
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They will always sound a little bit like LLMs, even if the tone is more convincing than it once was; we will always sound like humans, for better or worse. Right?
Evidence is mounting, however, that the way that LLMs ‘speak’ is starting to change the way humans speak. In July, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development published research that suggested human speech was being influenced, gradually, by the way LLMs were communicating.
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“I realized I was using ‘delve’ more,” said researcher Hiromu Yakura, referencing one of the early quirks of ChatGPT, which famously overused the word. “I wanted to see if this was happening not only to me but to other people.”
Their research found a surge in ChatGPT-isms used in human YouTube videos and podcast episodes — terms like ‘delve,’ ‘boast,’ and ‘meticulous.’ Analysts had already been tracking the rise in these words in academic papers, but the assumption had been it was due solely to a rise in the use of LLM output. What Yakura’s research suggests it is also because humans are starting to speak more like the LLM outputs they’re reading so frequently.
“The patterns that are stored in AI technology seem to be transmitting back to the human mind,” said researcher Levin Brinkmann in Scientific American.
One of the front lines for this is Reddit of all places, where moderators of long-standing subreddits like r/AmItheAsshole are having an increasingly difficult time distinguishing between what is AI slop and what is a human who just writes like AI.
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But it’s not just down in the muck of Reddit. A New York Times Magazine essay by writer Sam Kriss noted that British politicians suddenly started using the phrase ‘I rise to speak’ — a common phrase in among American lawmakers, not British ones. It wasn’t necessarily the case that MPs were having ChatGPT write their speeches, but it might be the case that all political speech is being inflected with certain AI-isms.
So, we may be approaching something like a tonal convergence point for human and AI text. AIs are mimics, but so are humans.
“The more we’re exposed to AI, the more we unconsciously pick up its tics, and it spreads from there,” Kriss wrote. “Perhaps that day will come for us, too. Soon, without really knowing why, you will find yourself talking about the smell of fury and the texture of embarrassment. You, too, will be saying ‘tapestry.’ You, too, will be saying ‘delve.’”
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