The telltale signs of AI-written content are becoming common knowledge

Readers are getting better at spotting machine-generated text, and the tells are becoming common knowledge. The most cited giveaway: excessive use of the em dash, followed closely by heavy emoji stuffing.

The emoji point carries an accessibility angle many writers miss. Screen readers used by visually impaired readers announce every emoji aloud with its description, so a string of decorative icons can distort the meaning of a sentence for exactly the audience that relies on the description.

The conversation is pushing professional communicators toward formal transparency. Some marketers now attach content authenticity statements and published generative-AI policies to their emails and course pages, disclosing what share of a message was machine-drafted and what was written by hand.

The emerging consensus is not anti-AI. Most practitioners describe a blended workflow, using assistants for drafting and research while keeping the final voice their own, and argue the line that matters is authenticity of connection rather than purity of process.

The anxiety underneath is commercial as much as ethical: as audiences learn to recognize unedited chatbot output, content that reads as machine-made is starting to erode the trust that email and social marketing depend on.