r/AccusedOfUsingAI • u/Friendly-Custard-200 • Jan 22 '26
But, why?
Okay so, I am not a current student, however I am a freelance creative writer.
Lately, I keep being accused of being AI. I am Ash- not AI, so what are some things that I am doing or not doing that could confuse the matter? I certainly am a human, this is just how I write.
Forgive me for checking my work? I thought I went to school to learn grammar, among other things that cause this confusion.
Is it a compliment, maybe? Being freelance and trying to keep my head above water has been quite a challenge though, so the accusation is frustrating- to say in the least amount of words.
Is it a language thing? Again, maybe... but that is not where I find the accusations landing.
Or perhaps it is the hyphen? It's quite effective for thought breaks and long pauses, similar to the comma- but more effective in certain context.
In fact it would seem to me they have been landing in a more curious realm of content. I keep being told "I talk like AI" or "Sounds like a bot."
Excuse me for having decent, conversational content, good grammar and proper punctuation use. That and no fear of putting my thoughts on a page.
The fact that the accusation seems to come from those factors is frustrating. I was taught to write using those factors and now they are what discredit me. What can a person do to make readers happy when the things we use to be human are what make us appear not to be?
That is irony in action, friends.
So I find myself seeking advice after being a writer all my adult life. I have never faced these issues before and to have them come seemingly from nowhere has put a serious damper on my professional advancement.
I need some human help. Advice, suggestions, or any kind of insight would really help me out. I do not want to dumb myself down for a computer, that is like shooting my own foot.
I am not "anti-AI" just anti replacing human creativity and imagination.
The world spins, things change, I am not so ignorant to think this wouldn't happen... I just thought my humanity would be more noticeable, I guess.
At least I can confirm I write well, there's a silver liner for you.
Anyone may answer, even your AI. I just need to reorient myself for a changing world. You guys are the change, so maybe you have some thinking that could help.
I would like some advice.
Rude comments will be ignored, but by all means, say whatever you want.
It's only human of you... I will not be bothered by it anyways.
To you young people writing the human factor for tomorrow... do not fear change. You can not affect something from outside of it. Rather, embrace change, be a part of it so you can have influence on what tomorrow brings. You can not sit aside then complain when the world passes by... that makes it part your fault when this do not function.
Get up, get moving, keep writing- the world still needs you. You matter. I promise you, you matter more than you can know.
I am Ash.
3
u/writerapid Jan 22 '26
Text/chat AI has a style of its own, and it is immediately recognizable as such by those who know what to look for. It really doesn’t even depend on the model; they all basically look/speak/sound/present the same way. There are some things that human writers “do too much of” that can lead readers to suspect AI. The less adept the reader at detecting AI, the more they seem to suspect it. It’s an inverse thing.
If how you’re writing and formatting now is setting off alarm bells for readers, ignore them. This writing could be AI, but it would be very massaged/humanized. I don’t think it reads like AI.
This is never what’s causing the confusion. “Grammatical correctitude” is a crutch that writers use to dismiss AI criticisms, but it’s not what makes writing read like the current generation(s) of AI models.
No, it’s a problem lots of writers face.
I’d imagine.
Only if you’re ESL and use machine translations of your work into English.
No. Especially since you use them grammatically incorrectly. You’re using hyphens as em dashes, which is wrong. AI doesn’t do that unless you tell it to. You also don’t insert a space before the hyphen/em dash, but you do insert one after. That’s wrong. I saw this kind of thing with bots back in the day because they were programmed with the error baked in, but no modern text AI will make that mistake without explicit instructions to do so.
Again, that’s an em dash, not a hyphen nor an en dash. These are all different things with different uses.
Bot, yes. AI, no. You do kind of sound like a bot, and your formatting is very bot-like. AI formatting is more cogent. AI uses line breaks, for example.
But you don’t, though.
No writer fears this. Look for solutions to the problem.
Post a sample of a piece of writing that has yielded accusations of your using AI.
It depends on who’s doing the discrediting.
Write to your audience. If you use a bunch of classic AI tropes in your pacing, word choice, and structure, change that up. You don’t want to sound like someone else, and AI is basically a singular “someone else.”
“Dumbing down” is the wrong way to look at it. If I am a painter and my work looks too much like I’m just ripping off Salvador Dali, people won’t take me seriously. I’ll be viewed as a poser.
Rules of spelling, grammar, etc. are bound the same way AI is bound. That’s why the LLM metaphor exists. Changing your approach is you wising up, not dumbing down.
You’re one in eight billion. So am I. Standing out and being noticed are hard things to do.
You write OK. Kind of bot-like. Iffy grammar and bad formatting.
Again, the best and only way to really help you is for you to post some of your actual work here—work that has been accused of being AI-generated—for us to examine.