# How AI writes

Bookmarks on what distinguishes AI writing and how to identify it while you still can.

- <!-- 2023-12-04 -->["Wikipedia: Signs of AI writing"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing) (2023--present)
- <!-- 2024-10-21 -->["Do LLMs write like humans? Variation in grammatical and rhetorical styles"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16107), Alex Reinhart et al. (2024): GPT-4o, Llama 3
- <!-- 2025-03-25 -->["hydrogen jukeboxes: on the crammed poetics of 'creative writing' LLMs"](https://www.tumblr.com/nostalgebraist/778041178124926976/hydrogen-jukeboxes), nostalgebraist (2025): [DeepSeek R1](!W), [GPT-5](!W) as the "unreleased OpenAI model".
  Borrows the term "eyeball kick" from the ["Turkey City Lexicon"](https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/18/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/) created by the [eponymous writing workshop](!W "Turkey City Writer's Workshop").
- <!-- 2025-06-25 -->["Your Words (Are Not Your Own)"](https://buildingalone.substack.com/p/your-words), notadampaul (2025)
- <!-- 2025-11-27 -->["How to Identify AI-Written Web Fiction"](https://recordcrash.substack.com/p/how-to-identify-ai-written-web-fiction), Makin (2025): ChatGPT
- <!-- 2025-12-03 -->["Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?"](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-style.html), Sam Kriss (2025): ChatGPT
- <!-- 2026-02 -->["Tropes - AI Writing Pattern Directory"](https://tropes.fyi/), Ossama Chaib (2026)
- <!-- 2026-03-27 -->["'...as it turns out...'"](https://hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com/p/as-it-turns-out), Hollis Robbins (2026)
- <!-- 2026-04-03 -->["StoryScope: Investigating idiosyncrasies in AI fiction"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03136), Jenna Russell et al. (2026)

## See also

- ["'AI mode collapse' directory"](https://gwern.net/doc/reinforcement-learning/preference-learning/mode-collapse/index)
- ["LLM writing styles"](https://www.refsmmat.com/notebooks/llm-style.html), Alex Reinhart
- <!-- 2025-10-01 -->["Verbalized Sampling: How to Mitigate Mode Collapse and Unlock LLM Diversity"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01171), Jiayi Zhang et al. (2025)

## Page metadata

URL: <https://dbohdan.com/ai-writing.md>

Published 2025-12-09, updated 2026-06-23.

Tags:

- AI
- bookmarks
- forensics
- writing