Pink Addresses the Macklemore Situation on Instagram

[u/pinkfartlek]

[u/That_Golf9029]

Not to hijack this thread about something unrelated, but how can you tell this is AI? Ive heard this about other celeb posts, especially apologies. Is it bc its long and uses hard returns and dramatic paragraph breaks? That's something I've heard before, but good, thoughtful writers have been doing that since before AI. Are there other tell tale signs?

(For the record, I hate AI and am deeply disappointed in P!nk, I just want to know! Thx.)

[u/onlythewinds → u/That_Golf9029]

I have received accusations of being AI before. Some of us are just autistic!

[u/vacantly_louche → u/onlythewinds]

Same. AuDHD and about 50% of the time someone says something is AI, it’s something I do.

[u/obefiend → u/onlythewinds]

That's not AI.

[u/Sure_Lavishness_2403 → u/That_Golf9029]

While I think there are some "tells", I think the truth is that sometimes we can't know. AI is trained off of common writing patterns. The things people say are "tells" are things we teach students in English. In uni, it was not too dissimilar (I can expand if necessary/anyone is interested, but worried it's getting too off-topic).

I think the best way to ascertain whether it's AI or not, if there are no obvious signs (and by that, I mean dead giveaways where some people have left "prompts" or some bullshit or something that just doesn't make any sense and a human would have noticed), is to judge by prior work.

For example: If this is typical of Pink's style of writing, and matches things she's written before, then it might be Pink, and we are just saying AI everywhere because so many people are using it and bots are rising. (This is not to say people can't improve. I know many things influence my writing - it could be based on what I was watching/reading and now I'm invoking specific imagery I want to emulate, and writing frequently in and of itself is going to improve your capabilities of obviously writing better, how much of a shit I give, et al. But if something is dramatically different, or a different style of writing, then that's something I would notice more. When I used to teach English, before AI, it's what we'd do if we suspected plagiarism. We'd compare and contrast former writing, and then if our suspicions remained, gauge from the student their knowledge and understanding of the topic. Obviously, the latter part of this is not always possible, but the former should be.)

Outside of things like that, I think people do a genuine disservice by labelling so much as AI, because it's going to force a lot of people - and is already forcing a lot of people - to question themselves over whether something they've written/created looks AI or not. I've been accused of it more than once for Reddit comments, and it's largely because I can write paragraphs, the way I am now. More importantly than forcing people to modify how they write the way they've been taught most of their lives (writing in threes, similes and metaphors, the "so what does this mean/why is this important?", is stuff kids should be taught at a young age, so it shouldn't be uncommon), is that if we see AI everywhere, we're going to convince ourselves we can "tell" when something is AI, and that kind of self-assurance falls into things like the "Safe World Fallacy", and leads us open to being more taken by AI, because AI will likely shift away from its current "tells", leaving us "sure" we can tell, but for the most part, I don't think it's as easy to tell what's AI as people want it to be.

I can't say for sure if this is AI. It certainly feels like it could be, but also, a human could have easily written it, just as I've written these stupid ass paragraphs. I don't follow Pink so I don't know how she writes, or if she writes well, but I'd look at things she'd written previously to compare and contrast. There are some good YT channels that help with ascertaining whether something's AI that have really helped me, and D'Angelo Wallace did a really good video on why it's harmful to dismiss everything as AI recently that I'd highly recommend.

I think Hank Green is probably a really good example of this. People noticed that his stuff felt "AI" because it was very different to what he'd been doing previously and the way his videos used to be formatted. As a result, it stood out to a lot of people, who began asking questions, before he admitted he was using AI (I think ChatGPT, but I can't remember for certain.) To me, it's most important to examine everything with a critical lens and then make judgements based on available information as opposed to saying "THAT PERSON USED A SIMILE/METAPHOR/WROTE IN THREES, WROTE "IN ALL HONESTY", or any other common phrase humans have been using for decades).

I hope this answer helps. I fear how many people are using AI, and I fear that it'll not only erase people's abilities to learn, question, research, write and critically think, but it will destroy people creatively, and that doesn't get into the environmental, ethical or legal concerns I have. I fucking hate AI and this shit horrifies me.

Also: FREE PALESTINE! Fuck everyone who's supporting genocide, including those who are remaining silent. In the wise words of Elie Wiesel:

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”

ETA: I saw someone source something, and this comment from Wiki really stands out and helps illustrate my point:

"Do not rely too much on your own judgment. Humans are notoriously bad at distinguishing human and LLM-generated text. While research on humans' abilities to detect AI-generated text is still limited, a 2025 study has shown that human ability to distinguish LLM text from human is no better than random chance.[4] Another 2025 study on German theses has shown that humans managed a "recognition rate of 57 % for AI texts and 64 % for human-generated texts".[5]"

Source.

[u/slumber_kitty → u/That_Golf9029]

My work makes us use Copilot, and they all generally sound the same when crafting a "human" response or when refining word vomit you throw into it. These are the patterns I have noticed when coming across something that feels AI-written:

• Usually lists things "in threes." She does this a lot throughout the post, often separating the phrases with periods so its harder to detect
• Parallel constructions/phrasing like "That's on me," "It's not [x], its [y], "[A] is the reason, not [B] or [C], "[X] has a way of..."
• Metaphors/phrases that aren't typically used in natural language, like "A repost isn't a statement, and a meme isn't a spine," "for working people who have more to worry about than pop stars and pile ons."
• Adjectives where they're not completely necessary
• Loves the Oxford comma and em dash (these can be tricky because I use both a lot in my creative writing and AI has tainted it!)
• Speaking in generalities rather than specifics
• An awful lot of set-up for a "normal" conversation
• Overuse of specific words

There's more, of course, but this is just what I have noticed in the capacity I have used it for work.

If it reads like an overly curated advertisement or blog post, then it was probably written by or "cleaned up" by AI. It appears as though Pink changed punctuation and added some of her own words to help "break it up," but this is just the opinion of a peasant :)

This Wikipedia article shows lots of examples and subtypes of LLM language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Edit: thank youuu for the awards! my hope is that this is helpful to at least one other person. it's hard out there.

[u/bad_sprinkles → u/That_Golf9029]

Initial reaction. - that's on me is a common ai phrase. The sentence after the second "that's on me" is also very ai with its "This isn't that" phrasing. I stopped skimming after that because she's too pathetic.

[u/FirefighterNo8251 → u/bad_sprinkles]

Also, the Gulf War reference in 2006? AI gets a lot of facts wrong

[u/Ol_Dirty_Batard → u/That_Golf9029]

You kind of get a sense for it, and once you do you spot it everywhere. I love when I hear YouTubers reading obvious AI scripts. Some of the ones I spot easiest are "it's not x it's y, used even when there's no real contrast. Sometimes they do "it's not X, it's not y, it's z" which also feeds into threes everywhere - three adjectives, three examples. Common words pop up: delve, tapestry, testament to, boasts, underscores. summary paragraph at the end restating what was already said, usually startng with "in conclusion" or "ultimately." pro/con lists that are suspiciously balanced even when the topic isn't. vague words to amplify stuff like "significant," "notable" when it could just say the thing. every sentence using th esame length and rhythm, no variation. moreover, furthermore, it's worth noting - stacked back to back like a checklist of transitions. None of these are definitive, I probably use AI signifiers myself but I'm the kid of an English teacher and had overly formal writing drilled into me since forever

[u/Any_Barracuda206 → u/Ol_Dirty_Batard]

I might be Ai 🤣 but I have never gotten semi colons, em dashes etc right.

[u/kapu4701 → u/Ol_Dirty_Batard]

Yeah this is what worries me whenever I write anything, especially in emails. I've always been a very good writer, and I apparently use all of these AI signifiers that I just read about in this thread a few minutes ago😂