https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-...
That said, their use may raise suspicion of AI, but they are _not_ proof of AI. I don't want to live in a world where people with large vocabularies are not taken seriously. Such an anti-intellectual stance is extremely dangerous.
It has nothing to do with "large vocabularies". I know who the people with large vocabularies were that originally caused the delving thing too, and they weren't American. (Mostly they were Nigerian.) I'm confused what you think specific kinds of metaphors involving sounds have to do with large vocabularies though.
> I've seen it (and metaphors using the other words you noted) used in fiction for my entire life
And the point is that this article isn't fiction. Or not supposed to be anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/high-school-english-te...
Somewhat contradictory, I don't think you can ignore fiction when discussing technical writing, since technical writing (especially online) has become far more casual (and influenced by conversation, pop culture, and yes, even fiction) than it ever was before. So while as I noted above, younger people are reading less these days, people are also less strict about how formal technical writing needs to be, so they may very well include words and expressions not commonly seen in that style of writing in the past.
I'm not arguing that these things can't be indicators of AI generation. I'm just arguing that they can't be proof of AI generation. And that argument only gets stronger as time goes on an more people are (sadly) influenced by things AI have generated.