AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds
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Teams from Google and leading universities found that large-language models change the voice, tone and intended meaning of human authors.
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EXCLUSIVE Tech News Using AI makes writing more bland, study finds Teams from Google and leading universities found that large-language models change the voice, tone and intended meaning of human authors. Leila Register / NBC News; Getty Images Share Add NBC News to Google March 19, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT By Jared Perlo Listen to this article with a free account 00:00 00:00 Does money lead to happiness? Researchers from a coalition of West Coast universities were curious how 100 human participants would respond to the age-old question, but not because of their own pursuit of happiness. Instead, the researchers wanted to know how participants’ use of AI systems might sway their answers. The research team found that users who heavily relied on large language models produced responses that diverged significantly in meaning from the answers of participants who only partially relied on LLMs or avoided their use altogether, suggesting heavy AI use alters the substance of humans’ arguments in addition to changing writing style. “The LLMs are pushing the essays away from anything that a human would have ever written,” said Natasha Jaques, one of the lead authors of the study and a computer science professor at the University of Washington, highlighting the "blandification" of writing that relies on AI systems. “They just change human writing in a way that’s very large and very unlike what humans would have done otherwise.” The new research, which has been peer-reviewed and accepted to an upcoming workshop at a leading AI conference , found that people who heavily relied on LLMs produced essays that answered the happiness question with a neutral response 69% more often than participants who did not use AI or only used AI for light edits. The study participants who used AI less often or avoided AI entirely submitted essays that were much more passionate, either positively or negatively, about the link between money and happiness. In addition to AI’s impact on the meaning of the es...
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