Opus 5.5 loves to tell you ‘this matters’ (and other AI writing tells)

Now that LLM-generated prose is everywhere, human beings are eager for ways to sniff it out. While early tells like em-dashes and “delve” are long gone, researchers say there are still plenty of telltale habits that AI models fall back on when writing prose. A new study from the marketing firm Graphite looked at the writing habits of frontier models, sussing out each model’s favorite words and phrases. While old tells like em-dash use have been stamped out, models still fall back on contrast-heavy constructions, with each model version showing its own unique quirks.

First reported by TechCrunch. This page is a short excerpt; the full text is theirs.