Humans not just write like ChatGPT but also speak like AI chatbot, new study reveals

ChatGPT

A strange shift is happening in the way we communicate. For years, people worried that AI would flood the internet with robotic writing. Now researchers say humans themselves are starting to sound like chatbots. And this isn’t just about how we type. It is creeping into everyday speech too.

A new study from the Max Planck Institute looked at how language has changed since ChatGPT arrived. The researchers noticed that people on YouTube had suddenly started using words that were once uncommon in casual conversation. Words like underscore, comprehend, meticulous and bolster began appearing more often. The timing matched the rise of ChatGPT, hinting that people may be absorbing the chatbot’s vocabulary without even realising it.

But the real proof might be outside the data. Moderators of popular Reddit communities told Wired that many posts now feel like they were written by AI even when they come from real people. These are subreddits built on human drama, so users expect messy, emotional stories. Instead, they are getting neat, polished paragraphs that read like they were generated by a bot. Moderators say they often rely on gut feeling because the line between human writing and AI writing has blurred so much.

One moderator describes it simply. AI learns from people, and people copy what they see online. So our writing and speaking styles start drifting toward the same tone AI uses. Then AI picks up these patterns again. It becomes a feedback loop where both sides slowly begin to look and sound the same.

There is also evidence in public spaces. Essayist Sam Kriss recently pointed out that UK lawmakers began using the phrase “I rise to speak,” a line commonly found in American political speech and often produced by chatbots. It appeared 26 times in a single day in Parliament. Whether or not AI wrote those speeches, the phrasing has slipped into human speech in a way that feels unmistakably artificial.

Even corporate messages seem touched by this new tone. When Starbucks shut down some locations earlier this year, signs on the doors had the kind of flowery, overly sentimental sentences that many people now associate with AI. Maybe a bot wrote them. Maybe a human did. But that uncertainty is exactly the point.

We may not be replaced by AI, but we are definitely starting to sound like it.