There is a test I have started applying to every piece of AI-assisted content I read, and it has never failed me. It is this: can you find a single sentence in this that could only have come from someone with direct experience of the subject? In most cases, the answer is no. And that tells you almost everything you need to know about who wrote it and how.

The argument you will hear is that AI democratises writing. That someone who previously struggled to put sentences together can now produce polished, readable content with minimal effort. This is true, in the same way that autotune democratised singing. The output is technically correct. It is also frequently hollow, and increasingly indistinguishable from everything else being produced by the same method.

What nobody is saying loudly enough is that AI does not solve the underlying problem of having nothing to say. It solves the surface problem of not being able to say it clearly. These are entirely different problems, and confusing them is why most AI-assisted writing is forgettable the moment you stop reading it.