It’s not just one thing — it’s another thing

2026-04-20 · Source: AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Emerging Technologies & Innovation · Depth: Fundamental Awareness, quick

Summary

A specific sentence construction, "It's not just X — it's Y," has become a strong indicator of AI-generated writing, moving from a mere clue to almost a guarantee. A Barron's report, utilizing market intelligence firm AlphaSense's database, found this phrasing dramatically increased in corporate communications, quadrupling from approximately 50 mentions in 2023 to over 200 uses in 2025 across news releases, earnings reports, and government filings. Examples from Cisco, Accenture, Workday, McKinsey, and Microsoft illustrate this trend, with Microsoft's blog post alone featuring the construction multiple times. This linguistic pattern is not just a coincidence but a reflection of the training data used by generative AI tools, which also exhibit a high frequency of em-dashes. Max Spero, CEO of AI detection tool Pangram, notes that while the base rate of this structure is high, its increased incidence in formal company documents suggests a growing reliance on AI.

Key takeaway

For VPs of Engineering or Data evaluating content authenticity, your teams should be aware that the "it's not just X, it's Y" sentence construction is a strong indicator of AI-generated text, especially in formal corporate communications. This trend, evidenced by a quadrupling of its use in recent years, suggests a growing reliance on AI in content creation. You should integrate linguistic pattern analysis into your content verification processes to identify potential AI authorship and maintain communication integrity.

Key insights

A specific sentence structure is now a strong indicator of AI-generated corporate communications.

Principles

• AI writing reflects its training data.
• Linguistic patterns can signal AI authorship.

In practice

• Scan corporate documents for "not just X, it's Y" phrasing.
• Consider em-dash frequency as another AI writing tell.

Topics

• AI Content Detection
• Corporate Communications
• Generative AI
• Stylometric Analysis
• AlphaSense

Best for: CTO, VP of Engineering/Data, Director of AI/ML, Marketing Professional, Consultant, Tech Journalist

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch.