ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models) are designed to sound like us. Trained on vast amounts of human writing (sometimes scraped without consent), they learned to spot patterns and generate words that feel natural, fluent, and polished – how we would write ourselves.

But something strange may now be happening. These tools aren’t just mimicking our language anymore – they could be reshaping it. The way AI writes is beginning to influence the way we write, even when we’re not using it, but simply because everyone else is.

The new language loop

If you’ve noticed words like “delve”, “realm”, “pivotal” or “meticulous” cropping up more often – or phrases like “the real kicker” and patterns like “it’s not X, it’s Y” – you’re not imagining it.