This is spot on. Recently we had a distant relative die, and the obituary was “off” to me in all the ways he lists here. I though it must have been AI generated from a questionnaire the funeral home gave the family to use. I don’t like it, but I have to give grace in this case due to the unexpected nature of the death
Is there a way to tell AI writing from writing from corporate HQ?
There’s also the AI generated narrater on YouTube which drives me nuts. There seem to be two or three of them that recite the text with some sort of fake authoritative male voice. The first few times it sounds like an old cigarette commercial from the fiftees, then it becomes very annoying. As soon as I hear it the video goes into video garbage immediately.
I use em-dashes more than most humans — so did Emily Dickinson.
It’s not just X, it’s Y.
And honestly, isn’t that the way it should be?
I’m a bit disturbed by Jimmy Kimmel being suspended for his speech, not because I like him [I don’t!], but on principle.
On the other hand, Democrats have been doing this for years. “Biden” even created a government department to censor ordinary Americans’ speech. So, if Democrats complain, their hypocrisy will be on full display.
Had enough of Republicans bringing a prune to a gunfight!
Huxley,
I have my MS Word set to auto-correct two hyphens to an en-dash and three to an em-dash.
Just as a prelude: I’m not posting this as a response to Selfy’s comment. I had thought of this comment before coming to this site, + reading today’s comments:
Lots of TV + film actors are throwing an angry tizzy- that JImmy Kimmel’s, my words- [offensive + maybe libelous remarks], got him fired from his TV show.
I see.
I see.
Does anyone remember, after 2000, when [Roseanne Barr] got fired from her TV show, for her questionable comments, aka her comments that a lot of actors and others called- offensive?
Was it fair to fire her, but not fair to fire him?
Here’s what I’m sort of concerned about with AI. Before AI came into existence, people did Google searches for solutions to practical problems, like how to repair a specific type of toilet or resolve an electrical or drywall problem. On such Q&A sites there is a lot of back and forth with various alternative solutions, things to avoid, etc.
But I don’t search the web like that anymore. I just ask chatgpt. So, to the extent that people don’t contribute to the underlying websites, the available material on the web is going to get stale fast, with AI relying on old information.
For some things, like fixing a drain, it may not matter. But it might for others, especially if new products come out and nobody thinks to write about them on the web.
The first time chatgpt responded, “Great question!”, I was a little flattered. But it got obvious real fast. Give me a break…
Was it fair to fire her, but not fair to fire him?
TR:
Roseanne Barr tweeted that Valerie Jarrett looked like the child of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. Which is pretty personal and nasty.
Kimmel compared Trump’s tribute to Charlie Kirk to a child mourning a pet goldfish. Which is pretty personal and nasty too.
However, what got Kimmel fired IMO was his claim that Robinson was obviously a MAGA assassin and that MAGA supporters were tying themselves into knots trying to blame the left. A lie.
I doubt either Barr or Kimmel were fired out of fairness.
I think Barr was fired for going against the Woke imperatives which corporations had taken on plus some fear of bad publicity and boycotts.
Kimmel, OTOH, was likely fired (indefinitely suspended) for risks: defamation/libel risk, regulatory risk under the FCC, commercial risk via affiliates and advertisers.
We were fired from our jobs, drummed off every major Internet platform and debanked for the crimes of not taking an experimental vaccine, or blaspheming against their sacred cows. They are being fired from their jobs for openly, publicly celebrating and glorifying murder and assassination and calling for more of it, calling for the murder of everyone from the widow and her children to the sitting President to the world’s best-selling author of children’s fantasy.
There have been three major periods of leftist violence in American history, and none of them are referred to as left-wing terror campaigns. The most recent being the “Days of Rage” in the 1970’s. Political violence by the left represents the absolute majority of all political violence in American history.
The left have been calling the right Nazis for eighty years. And for the last ten years, calling someone a Nazi or fascist has been a less and less thinly veiled statement that it is a moral imperative to murder that person. Sure, they’re telling us, Charlie Kirk was murdered for trying to have a peaceful debate. But at least he didn’t lose his job over it.
Kimmel wasn’t “removed by fascist Trump”. He was fired by Disney for violating FCC guidelines, claiming falsehood as fact that could invite violence and impede an ongoing law enforcement investigation, and for violating the terms of their broadcast license agreement by which we the people generously grant them access to the electromagnetic spectrum held in trust by our government.
Any nonsense about “both sides” can go straight to Hell.
I believe the affiliates and advertisers were the key factor in Kimmel’s removal. People were outraged by his misstatements about the Kirk murderer’s intentions and told ABC/Disney they’d look elsewhere for content. Plus, Kimmel was reportedly less popular than Colbert, and Colbert was losing $40 million a year for his network. Money talks, which is fine. This was a business decision.
As several commentators have noted, ABC may have been looking for an excuse to get rid of a money-losing slot.
It appears Jimmy Kimmel has attracted many thousands of new fans.
Furry transsexuals and Tyler Robinson aficionados are livid over his hiatus.
Reddit and Bluesky participants suggesting a GoFundMe account to help him through these troubling times.
Where were you when you heard Jimmy Kimmel was fired? I mean suspended.
Paul in Boston,
I wasn’t a Judy Collins fan exceot for one song. I played her “Amazing Grace” over and over on the jukebox at the Nite Skool.
@ Eeyore > “Is there a way to tell AI writing from writing from corporate HQ?”
No. In fact, I suspect the LLMs learned a lot of their “style” from hoovering up all the corporate annual reports and newsletters on the internet.
(My sister the English major and college instructor used to do this before escaping to another job.)
However, the presenter’s first couple of “red flags” indicated only that the AI generated reports were written in the same style as middle and high school English teachers (like my mother) struggled to get their students to use.
Most of the others were worth keeping in mind.
BTW, if you have any lingering doubts about the uneducated state of our children, watch this otherwise heartening video and note the grammar and words the speaker uses that are simply wrong. And they were actually pretty good. Their speech was probably not written by AI.
Kids don’t read anymore, and don’t write formal reports, with or without M-dashes.
@ Paul in Boston > “There’s also the AI generated narrater on YouTube which drives me nuts.”
Agreed.
For me, the tell on those is partly that the text was probably AI generated (the presenter’s red flags are usually there, especially repetition), but mostly the mispronunciation of words, or using the wrong one for the context. Also sometimes the emphasis on syllables is wrong, kind of like people who learned English late in life and revert to the custom of their native language. It’s charming in visitors, but not so much in a narration that purports to be from a “native” speaker.
One could almost say there is a peculiar AI accent.
AI speech-to-text transcriptions for the Closed Caption option are sometimes so bad I have trouble figuring out what the speaker meant, and sometimes it’s just funny.
AI is actually better at grammar and word selection than most people these days, but there are still things that are “off” in way that differs from the misuse I see in blogs, and even “formal” news.
I’ve been collecting malaprops from the internet, mostly from the very good sources I read frequently, and some of the errors are astounding. Idioms deserve a rant all their own.
I suspect a lot of that is from lack of copy editors, who were expected to be just that English teacher who gave you nightmares in school. And nobody seems to even proof their own writing before hitting the POST button.
Neo is a very refreshing change; it is very, very seldom that I would have to put a red mark on her papers. In fact, I can’t even think of an example.
My list is very long, and I only started this summer.
Sigh.
his misstatements about the Kirk murderer’s intentions
==
He wasn’t confused. He lied.
The definition of “misstatement” includes deliberate lies.
Kimmel got canned because he stood by the blood libel that Charlie Kirk was assasinated by MAGA.
Anyone advancing political violence through Alinskyite lying is a public menace, and beyond the pale of civilized protections.
Thus, Kimmel is welcome to the slap in the face coming with incitement.
AI sounds like it trained on a whole lot of TV transcripts and ad copy.
And honestly, no doubt it did.
Hi there, blog. I’m curious about these noises I’m hearing in certain quarters about some kind of general strike that’s supposedly going to happen in France today, tomorrow, something like that. Is there anything to this?
@ Selfy: ” Had enough of Republicans bringing a prune to a gunfight!”
Now, if they were to start bringing pineapples, it might be a different story!
This is spot on. Recently we had a distant relative die, and the obituary was “off” to me in all the ways he lists here. I though it must have been AI generated from a questionnaire the funeral home gave the family to use. I don’t like it, but I have to give grace in this case due to the unexpected nature of the death
Is there a way to tell AI writing from writing from corporate HQ?
Is there a way to tell AI writing from writing from corporate HQ?
==
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Doodah-George-Walker-1986-01-01/dp/B019L54JRO
https://youtu.be/w70-1b9SCj0?si=C8XGAzabeTeqhBOp&t=32
There’s also the AI generated narrater on YouTube which drives me nuts. There seem to be two or three of them that recite the text with some sort of fake authoritative male voice. The first few times it sounds like an old cigarette commercial from the fiftees, then it becomes very annoying. As soon as I hear it the video goes into video garbage immediately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2G8hSHEPe4
Art Deco,
Judy Collins was my heart throb when I was in high school. I still think she was the best folk singer of the day with only Joan Baez as competition.
A better version of her singing “Someday Soon” with all the notes left in.
https://youtu.be/ZIgnHPqp0Dk?si=GsCJBJnZGVBeK9mB
Re: AI video
I use em-dashes more than most humans — so did Emily Dickinson.
It’s not just X, it’s Y.
And honestly, isn’t that the way it should be?
I’m a bit disturbed by Jimmy Kimmel being suspended for his speech, not because I like him [I don’t!], but on principle.
On the other hand, Democrats have been doing this for years. “Biden” even created a government department to censor ordinary Americans’ speech. So, if Democrats complain, their hypocrisy will be on full display.
Had enough of Republicans bringing a prune to a gunfight!
Huxley,
I have my MS Word set to auto-correct two hyphens to an en-dash and three to an em-dash.
Just as a prelude: I’m not posting this as a response to Selfy’s comment. I had thought of this comment before coming to this site, + reading today’s comments:
Lots of TV + film actors are throwing an angry tizzy- that JImmy Kimmel’s, my words- [offensive + maybe libelous remarks], got him fired from his TV show.
I see.
I see.
Does anyone remember, after 2000, when [Roseanne Barr] got fired from her TV show, for her questionable comments, aka her comments that a lot of actors and others called- offensive?
Was it fair to fire her, but not fair to fire him?
Here’s what I’m sort of concerned about with AI. Before AI came into existence, people did Google searches for solutions to practical problems, like how to repair a specific type of toilet or resolve an electrical or drywall problem. On such Q&A sites there is a lot of back and forth with various alternative solutions, things to avoid, etc.
But I don’t search the web like that anymore. I just ask chatgpt. So, to the extent that people don’t contribute to the underlying websites, the available material on the web is going to get stale fast, with AI relying on old information.
For some things, like fixing a drain, it may not matter. But it might for others, especially if new products come out and nobody thinks to write about them on the web.
The first time chatgpt responded, “Great question!”, I was a little flattered. But it got obvious real fast. Give me a break…
Was it fair to fire her, but not fair to fire him?
TR:
Roseanne Barr tweeted that Valerie Jarrett looked like the child of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. Which is pretty personal and nasty.
Kimmel compared Trump’s tribute to Charlie Kirk to a child mourning a pet goldfish. Which is pretty personal and nasty too.
However, what got Kimmel fired IMO was his claim that Robinson was obviously a MAGA assassin and that MAGA supporters were tying themselves into knots trying to blame the left. A lie.
I doubt either Barr or Kimmel were fired out of fairness.
I think Barr was fired for going against the Woke imperatives which corporations had taken on plus some fear of bad publicity and boycotts.
Kimmel, OTOH, was likely fired (indefinitely suspended) for risks: defamation/libel risk, regulatory risk under the FCC, commercial risk via affiliates and advertisers.
We were fired from our jobs, drummed off every major Internet platform and debanked for the crimes of not taking an experimental vaccine, or blaspheming against their sacred cows. They are being fired from their jobs for openly, publicly celebrating and glorifying murder and assassination and calling for more of it, calling for the murder of everyone from the widow and her children to the sitting President to the world’s best-selling author of children’s fantasy.
There have been three major periods of leftist violence in American history, and none of them are referred to as left-wing terror campaigns. The most recent being the “Days of Rage” in the 1970’s. Political violence by the left represents the absolute majority of all political violence in American history.
The left have been calling the right Nazis for eighty years. And for the last ten years, calling someone a Nazi or fascist has been a less and less thinly veiled statement that it is a moral imperative to murder that person. Sure, they’re telling us, Charlie Kirk was murdered for trying to have a peaceful debate. But at least he didn’t lose his job over it.
Kimmel wasn’t “removed by fascist Trump”. He was fired by Disney for violating FCC guidelines, claiming falsehood as fact that could invite violence and impede an ongoing law enforcement investigation, and for violating the terms of their broadcast license agreement by which we the people generously grant them access to the electromagnetic spectrum held in trust by our government.
Any nonsense about “both sides” can go straight to Hell.
I believe the affiliates and advertisers were the key factor in Kimmel’s removal. People were outraged by his misstatements about the Kirk murderer’s intentions and told ABC/Disney they’d look elsewhere for content. Plus, Kimmel was reportedly less popular than Colbert, and Colbert was losing $40 million a year for his network. Money talks, which is fine. This was a business decision.
As several commentators have noted, ABC may have been looking for an excuse to get rid of a money-losing slot.
It appears Jimmy Kimmel has attracted many thousands of new fans.
Furry transsexuals and Tyler Robinson aficionados are livid over his hiatus.
Reddit and Bluesky participants suggesting a GoFundMe account to help him through these troubling times.
Where were you when you heard Jimmy Kimmel was fired? I mean suspended.
Paul in Boston,
I wasn’t a Judy Collins fan exceot for one song. I played her “Amazing Grace” over and over on the jukebox at the Nite Skool.
@ Eeyore > “Is there a way to tell AI writing from writing from corporate HQ?”
No. In fact, I suspect the LLMs learned a lot of their “style” from hoovering up all the corporate annual reports and newsletters on the internet.
(My sister the English major and college instructor used to do this before escaping to another job.)
However, the presenter’s first couple of “red flags” indicated only that the AI generated reports were written in the same style as middle and high school English teachers (like my mother) struggled to get their students to use.
Most of the others were worth keeping in mind.
BTW, if you have any lingering doubts about the uneducated state of our children, watch this otherwise heartening video and note the grammar and words the speaker uses that are simply wrong. And they were actually pretty good. Their speech was probably not written by AI.
Kids don’t read anymore, and don’t write formal reports, with or without M-dashes.
https://x.com/atensnut/status/1967946465055318450
Linked from this excellent post by Andrea Widburg:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/09/tyler_robinson_s_parents_and_the_invasion_of_the_body_snatchers.html
I think she may be onto something there.
@ Paul in Boston > “There’s also the AI generated narrater on YouTube which drives me nuts.”
Agreed.
For me, the tell on those is partly that the text was probably AI generated (the presenter’s red flags are usually there, especially repetition), but mostly the mispronunciation of words, or using the wrong one for the context. Also sometimes the emphasis on syllables is wrong, kind of like people who learned English late in life and revert to the custom of their native language. It’s charming in visitors, but not so much in a narration that purports to be from a “native” speaker.
One could almost say there is a peculiar AI accent.
AI speech-to-text transcriptions for the Closed Caption option are sometimes so bad I have trouble figuring out what the speaker meant, and sometimes it’s just funny.
AI is actually better at grammar and word selection than most people these days, but there are still things that are “off” in way that differs from the misuse I see in blogs, and even “formal” news.
I’ve been collecting malaprops from the internet, mostly from the very good sources I read frequently, and some of the errors are astounding. Idioms deserve a rant all their own.
I suspect a lot of that is from lack of copy editors, who were expected to be just that English teacher who gave you nightmares in school. And nobody seems to even proof their own writing before hitting the POST button.
Neo is a very refreshing change; it is very, very seldom that I would have to put a red mark on her papers. In fact, I can’t even think of an example.
My list is very long, and I only started this summer.
Sigh.
his misstatements about the Kirk murderer’s intentions
==
He wasn’t confused. He lied.
( Former ?) TPSU board member on business relationship breakup between Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens over Owens views. https://nypost.com/2025/09/18/media/charlie-kirk-had-break-up-with-candace-owens-after-she-went-down-rabbit-holes/
Art Deco:
The definition of “misstatement” includes deliberate lies.
Kimmel got canned because he stood by the blood libel that Charlie Kirk was assasinated by MAGA.
Anyone advancing political violence through Alinskyite lying is a public menace, and beyond the pale of civilized protections.
Thus, Kimmel is welcome to the slap in the face coming with incitement.
AI sounds like it trained on a whole lot of TV transcripts and ad copy.
And honestly, no doubt it did.
Hi there, blog. I’m curious about these noises I’m hearing in certain quarters about some kind of general strike that’s supposedly going to happen in France today, tomorrow, something like that. Is there anything to this?
@ Selfy: ” Had enough of Republicans bringing a prune to a gunfight!”
Now, if they were to start bringing pineapples, it might be a different story!
RFK Jr. sure has his work cut out for him…
“The Pandemic Of Fake Psychiatric Diagnoses”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/pandemic-fake-psychiatric-diagnoses
@ Selfy > “Had enough of Republicans bringing a prune to a gunfight!”
@ huxley > “AI sounds like it trained on a whole lot of TV transcripts and ad copy.”
Visualizing Selfy’s line made me laugh, but the combination with huxley’s observation makes this video irresistible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRDLaSG6csA
Selfy, R2L:
And now for something completely different, bringing a banana to a gunfight:
–Monty Python, “Fruit Sketch” (3:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JgbOkLdRaE
It doesn’t end well.