This article was updated in June 2026.
AI writing is everywhere these days. I see it in student papers, in some of their emails, in Instagram posts from local restaurants, in newsletters I quickly unsubscribe to, and at the risk of sounding paranoid, even in some text messages.
The good news is that all this AI writing has helped me, like many others, get good at recognizing it. The biggest AI tell for me these days is that the writing just feels flat and lifeless with a lot of words strung together that don’t really convey meaning.
When I break this down, this is often about overuse of clichés and annoying tendencies such as rhetorical questions, short sentences, and the dreaded “It’s not x, it’s y.” construction.
Keeping an eye out for this in student work has helped me develop some techniques for honing my AI radar. In conversations with teaching colleagues, I’ve learned I’m not alone in using many of these strategies in the modern classroom.
Before we get to these strategies, however, it’s important to remember that suspected AI use isn’t immediate grounds for disciplinary action. These cases should be used as conversation starters with students and even – forgive the cliché – as a teachable moment to explain the problems with using AI-generated work.
To that end, I’ve written previously about how I handled these suspected AI cases, the troubling limitations and discriminatory tendencies of existing AI detectors, and about what happens when educators incorrectly accuse students of using AI.
With those caveats firmly in place, here are the signs I look for to detect AI use from my students.
1. How to Detect AI Writing: The Submission is Too Long
When an assignment asks students for one paragraph and a student turns in more than a page, my spidey sense goes off.
Almost every class does have one overachieving student who will do this without AI, but that student usually sends 14 emails the first week and submits every assignment early, and most importantly, while too long, their assignment is often truly well-written. A student who suddenly overproduces raises a red flag.
2. “It’s Not X, It’s Y…”
It’s not just a bad way of writing, it’s a mind virus infecting society. That’s pretty much the extent to which I’ve come to loathe the "It’s not X, it’s Y" construction that AI is such a fan of using.
If you haven’t noticed this already, give it a little time, you’re start to see it everywhere. I asked Gemini to explain why it’s so annoying using the "It’s Not X, It’s Y" construction. Here are some of the not-so-great gems it gave me:
- It is not a mark of clever writing; it is a shortcut for a tired brain.
- It’s not a stylistic choice; it’s a structural crutch
- It is not an elegant tool for persuasion; it is just a lazy way to pick a fight with a strawman.
Also common are its variations, including the escalating negation. Or what Gemini described to in the following way: “It’s not just lazy, it's not just uninspired, it's not even technically flawed—it's actively insulting to the audience.”
3. Several Short Sentences That Should Really Be One Sentence
Keep it short. This is a piece of writing advice I often give students, but AI takes this to an extreme by spitting our short declarative sentences in an often misguided attempt at dramatic writing. This can most easily be seen in items in a series.
The example my editor kindly provided for this story is perfect: “AI is dumb. AI is lazy. AI is more human than humans.” Rather than how a human would write it as, “AI is dumb, lazy, and more human than humans.”
I’ve never seen a person actually write a sentence the first way, but AI sets things up like that all the time.
4. Cliché Overuse
It’s always a dark and stormy night when it comes to AI writing. No matter how much better these may have gotten at writing over the years, AI tools are all addicted to clichés. In fact, you might say that their cliché use is on steroids and that it has not learned to avoid clichés like the plague.
This contributes to AI’s flat and emotionless vibe, which is something that that has remained an important sign of AI use since ChatGPT was first launched. I feel like the writing is a form of verbal musak: maybe it’s fine in the background, but it’s trite and annoying if you actually focus on it.
5. The Assignment Is Submitted Early
I don’t want to cast aspersions on those true overachievers who get their suitcases packed a week before vacation starts, finish winter holiday shopping in July, and have already started saving for retirement, but an early submission may be the first signal that I’m about to read some robot writing.
For example, several students this semester submitted an assignment the moment it became available. That is unusual, and in all of these cases, their writing also exhibited other stylistic points consistent with AI writing.
Warning: Use this tip with caution as it is also true that many of my best students have submitted assignments early over the years.
6. Excessive Use of Lists and Bullet Points
Here are some reasons that I suspect students are using AI if their papers have many lists or bullet points:
1. ChatGPT and other AI generators frequently present information in list form even though human authors generally know that’s not an effective way to write an essay.
2. Most human writers will not inherently write this way, especially new writers who often struggle with organizing information.
3. While lists can be a good way to organize information, presenting more complex ideas in this manner can be .…
4 … annoying.
5. Do you see what I mean?
6. (Yes, I know, it's ironic that I'm complaining about this here given that this story is also a list.)
7. It’s Mistake-Free
I’ve criticized ChatGPT’s writing here yet in fairness it does produce very clean prose that is, on average, more error-free than what is submitted by many of my students. Even experienced writers miss commas, have long and awkward sentences, and make little mistakes – which is why we have editors. ChatGPT’s writing isn’t too “perfect” but it’s too clean.
8. The Writing Doesn’t Match The Student’s Other Work
Writing instructors know this inherently and have long been on the lookout for changes in voice that could be an indicator that a student is plagiarizing work.
AI writing doesn't really change that. When a student submits new work that is wildly different from previous work, or when their discussion board comments are riddled with errors not found in their formal assignments, it's time to take a closer look.
9. Repeating Patterns
My oldest child is obsessed with a Sesame Street song that includes the chorus, “Patterns repeat, they go over and over . . . .”
This song has been seared on my soul, but it also is a good reminder for spotting student-generated AI writing. Sometimes one assignment will yield a number of papers that are eerily similar. While these are rarely actually identical, AI tends to have patterns when responding to similar prompts, so if you see a few students answering the same question in a way that sounds really similar, AI might be to blame. This can also be a helpful way to tackle AI without accusing a student of using AI because it can fall under the category of traditional plagiarism.
10. Something Is Just . . . Off
The boundaries between these different AI writing tells blur together and sometimes it's a combination of a few things that gets me to suspect a piece of writing. Other times it’s harder to tell what is off about the writing, and I just get the sense that a human didn’t do the work in front of me.
I’ve learned to trust these gut instincts to a point. When confronted with these more subtle cases, I will often ask a fellow instructor or my department chair to take a quick look (I eliminate identifying student information when necessary). Getting a second opinion helps ensure I’ve not gone down a paranoid “my students are all robots and nothing I read is real” rabbit hole. Once a colleague agrees something is likely up, I’m comfortable going forward with my AI hypothesis based on suspicion alone, in part, because as mentioned previously, I use suspected cases of AI as conversation starters rather than to make accusations.
Again, it is difficult to prove students are using AI and accusing them of doing so is problematic. Even ChatGPT knows that. When I asked it why it is bad to accuse students of using AI to write papers, the chatbot answered: “Accusing students of using AI without proper evidence or understanding can be problematic for several reasons.”
Then it launched into a list.
