It is, kind of! I definitely use it frequently, but the quantity that my kids use it is at a whole other level. But it’s a colloquial phrase that I rarely, if ever, hear ChatGPT use in the audio presentation, but looking at the chat transcript, there’s definitely a point at which it begins to use “kind of” in multiple ways in its responses, and it wasn’t before.
A more blatant example: it will start responding in French if you start speaking to it in French. These things are pattern machines and it makes sense that it will pick up on the lingo they fed (just like we will)
I was playing with the voice interface and pointed out something minor it got wrong (a misunderstood word in my input, not a hallucination/confabulation). The voice response began with, “Oops, my bad”, which made me laugh.
You can entirely remove it from your speech and lose very little.
I disagree. These linguistic innovations (including "like") serve to soften the message. It signals to the listener that the information is not based on considered truth, but on impressions, vibes. This is genuinely how its used, to signal the difference between a personal opinion and something somebody is convinced of. It's kind of like adding "but I could be wrong" to the end of everything
This is true in the narrow sense of it not changing the literal meaning of the sentence much. In a broader sense, using "kind of" a lot is part of a sociolect (in this caze zoomers) and you would lose some sense of beloning to that group by dropping it from your speech.