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“Oh, this is obviously AI. It uses em-dashes.”

You don’t say.

That’s not to say there isn’t something genuinely interesting in how quickly we’ve learned to identify AI-generated content, even as it gets better at pretending to be human. But I think the em-dash discourse says less about punctuation and more about the approach a lot of large corporations are taking towards generative content.

The human mind is a beautiful mess, but one thing it evolved to do ferociously well is pattern recognition. That, and sharing stories. Those two skills have helped early adopters, sceptics, and terminally online consumers quickly clock that one slightly forgotten piece of 15 century punctuation had become a weird little hallmark of AI-generated writing.

Whether you’re for or against this all-encompassing, omnipresent technology, the business case is pretty clear. It would be ignorant not to recognise its appeal to executives, directors, and managers. Many of them are, quite logically, leaving the door open while staying quiet on the ethics of automating what was once firmly the human domain of creation, expression, and communication.

It is almost certain that at least a couple of products or services you, dear reader, use every day are already using artificially generated content somewhere in their public-facing offerings. Maybe it’s copy on a webpage or inside an app. Maybe it’s the code running those experiences. Maybe it’s print, digital media, product imagery, support content, or some smiling stock-model-adjacent nightmare with just a few too many teeth.

And it’s likely you, or someone in your personal or professional orbit, has pointed it out.

You might have asked yourself, “This is obvious, does anyone mind?” You may have even considered whether it degrades your opinion of that product, brand, or service.

But for the vast majority of people, the thought then falls clean out the back of their head.

Modern life is brutal on mental bandwidth. We live in a decade where centuries seem to be happening, and once-in-a-lifetime events are turning up nearly annually. So while it might be sad, it is not hard to understand why thoughts about the wellbeing of the copywriter, designer, illustrator, developer, or creative team that would have once been employed to make those artefacts melt away pretty quickly in the face of everyone else trying to survive their own week.

There’s a pretty clear strategy that comes from understanding this if you’re a modern brand looking to take advantage of AI:

Don’t hide it. Don’t comment on it.

Until there are meaningful frameworks, legislation, and most importantly, laws with consequences around the ethical use of AI-generated content, companies get to have their cake and eat it too.

And they are.

The designers, stakeholders, and decision-makers behind that ad riddled with much-maligned em-dashes probably did not miss them. The uncanny model, the slightly too-smooth copy, the whole “something is off but I can’t be bothered unpacking it” vibe — that is not always an accident. Increasingly, I reckon it’s a conscious bet.

A bet that the action lacks consequences.

A bet that the harm is too abstract.

A bet that the consumer will notice, maybe scoff, maybe send a screenshot to a mate, and then move on.

As the practice becomes normalised, for better or worse, it gains not only velocity but effectiveness. There is already so much noise around AI, piled on top of all the other noise of this extremely busy era. Slowly but surely, it blends into the symphony, or the cacophony, depending on how you’re leaning.

Maybe it is the gas filling the bubble.

Maybe it is rocket fuel.

And even if future models are trained away from such heavy-handed tells, there will always be new facsimiles. New patterns. New giveaways. With plenty of little “this is obviously AI” moments.

I just don’t think it will matter for quite a while.

Doomer Den, out ✌️