The Great Language Flattening: When AI Becomes Our Invisible Writing Coach

Something fascinating and concerning is happening to human communication, and most of us don't even realize it.

Jeremy Nguyen's experiment at Swinburne University asked 320 people to write a simple sofa ad. After showing them ChatGPT's version of the same task, participants unconsciously tripled their word count from 32.7 to 87 words. Nobody told them to "write like AI" — but that's exactly what happened. 📝

Here's the deeper challenge: Emily Bender calls this "pattern laundering." You might resist ChatGPT's influence directly, but when your respected colleague sends you an AI-influenced email, you're unknowingly absorbing its linguistic quirks. A Cornell study found AI tools are already "homogenizing writing toward Western styles and diminishing nuances that differentiate cultural expression" — we're not just losing individual voice, we're erasing cultural diversity.

Simon Kirby paints an absurd future: someone feeds bullet points to AI for a flowery 1,000-word email, only for the recipient to immediately use another AI to summarize it back to bullet points. "Essentially, we've come up with a protocol where the machines are using flowery, formal language to send very long versions of very short messages," he observes. 🤖

But there's hope in the countermovement already emerging. Some writers are deliberately leaning into their idiosyncrasies, making human writing feel artisanal — like choosing handmade goods over factory products. The question for leaders isn't whether to embrace AI efficiency, but how to preserve the authentic voice and cultural nuance that drives real connection and competitive differentiation.

The risk isn't AI replacing us — it's AI making us all sound the same.

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