Words That Make Writing Sound Like AI, and What to Write Instead

You read a paragraph and know by the second line that nobody sat down and wrote it. Usually a handful of words give it away: a "delve" here, a "crucial" there, a "landscape" with no land in it. This is our working list of the words that make writing sound like AI, grouped by the job they do in a sentence, with what to write instead.

It is the companion to our guide on editing AI drafts for rhythm and specifics. That piece deals with the shape of the text. This one deals with the vocabulary.

Is there evidence, or is this folklore?

There is evidence, and it comes with a warning.

Researchers who analyzed more than 15 million biomedical abstracts published between 2010 and 2024 found that certain style words jumped abruptly once chat models arrived. From that excess vocabulary they estimated that at least 13.5% of 2024 abstracts had been processed with a language model (Kobak et al., Science Advances, 2025). The words that rose were mostly verbs and adjectives of style, such as "showcasing" and "pivotal," and not words tied to any research topic. The paper's own title jokes about it with "delving."

The warning is that the list moves. Wikipedia's volunteer editors maintain a field guide to signs of AI writing that tracks vocabulary by model generation. In their account, "delve" and "tapestry" belong to the 2023 to 2024 period and dropped off sharply in 2025, while "enhance," "highlighting," and "showcasing" persist in newer models. A study of 4,820 undergraduate reports found the same curve: markers such as "delve" and "intricate" surged until 2024 and declined in 2025, possibly because students had started masking them (Mak and Walasek, 2025).

So treat the tables below as a snapshot from October 2026. What the words have in common will outlast the list.

What these words have in common

They add emphasis without adding information. The test takes five seconds: delete the word and reread the sentence.

If the sentence says the same thing, the word was filler. If the sentence collapses, the word was covering for a missing fact. Take "Our platform plays a crucial role in streamlining workflows." Remove "crucial" and "streamlining" and you have "Our platform plays a role in workflows," which says nothing. The vocabulary was hiding an empty sentence.

That is why swapping synonyms is half a fix. "Use" is better than "leverage." Saying what was used, and what happened, is better than both.

Verbs

AI default	Write instead
delve into	look at, read, examine
leverage, utilize, harness	use
navigate (a challenge)	handle, or name the action itself
foster	build, encourage, or say what was done
underscore, highlight	show, or delete and state the fact
showcase	show
streamline	say which step disappeared
enhance, elevate	improve, and by how much
unlock	say what is now possible
embark on	start

Adjectives and adverbs

AI default	Write instead
crucial, pivotal, vital	say what goes wrong without it
robust	name what it withstands
comprehensive	list what it covers
seamless	say which steps the user no longer takes
intricate, nuanced, multifaceted	name the two things in tension
vibrant, rich	one concrete detail
ever-evolving, fast-paced, dynamic	delete
meticulously, truly, incredibly	delete, or say what was checked

Nouns that became metaphors

AI default	Write instead
landscape, realm, world of	market, field, or the named thing
tapestry	delete, then describe the parts
journey	process, project, the first year
testament to	shows
game-changer	say what changed
a myriad of, a plethora of	many, or the number
cornerstone, bedrock	basis, or delete
synergy	say who does what together

Frames and stock phrases

Single words are the easy part. These sentence frames are harder to see because each looks reasonable alone.

AI default	Write instead
"In today's fast-paced world..."	start with your second sentence
"It's important to note that..."	delete the frame, keep the note
"Whether you're a beginner or an expert..."	name the reader you mean
"It's not just X, it's Y."	state Y
"plays a key role in"	say what it does
"When it comes to..."	start with the subject
"Let's dive in."	delete
"In conclusion," "Ultimately,"	end on the last real point
"I hope this email finds you well."	the reason you are writing
"Moreover," "Furthermore," "Additionally,"	delete, or use "and"
"The result? A faster team."	"The team got faster."

A worked example: audit first, rewrite second

Asking a model to "remove the AI words" produces a new draft with different stock words. We ask for an audit, and we do the rewriting.

Audit the DRAFT for stock AI vocabulary. Do not rewrite it.

Return a table with four columns: the exact phrase, the sentence it
sits in, why it is weak (vague intensifier, empty frame, stock
metaphor, or filler connector), and a replacement that uses only
information already in the draft. If the phrase can simply be
removed, write "delete".

Check for:
- verbs like delve, leverage, utilize, navigate, foster, underscore,
  showcase, harness, streamline, elevate, unlock
- adjectives like crucial, pivotal, robust, comprehensive, seamless,
  intricate, vibrant, ever-evolving
- nouns used as metaphors: landscape, realm, tapestry, journey,
  testament, game-changer
- frames: "in today's...", "it's important to note", "whether you're
  X or Y", "not just X but Y", "plays a ... role", closing recaps
- anything else that could appear unchanged in a text on a different
  topic

Skip literal and technical uses (a ship navigates, a statistical
method is robust). After the table, list the sentences that say
nothing once the flagged words are removed.

DRAFT:
[paste your text]

Here is a typical task: a marketer's announcement of a webinar, drafted by a model.

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, it's crucial for marketing teams to leverage data. Our upcoming webinar delves into robust strategies that will help you navigate the complexities of attribution and unlock seamless reporting.

The audit flags nine phrases in two sentences. The last part of its answer is the useful one: once the flagged words are gone, the only information left is "we are running a webinar about attribution." No replacement table repairs that. The writer has to add what the model never had:

Thursday's webinar covers one question: why your ad platform and your CRM report different revenue for the same month, and which number to put in front of finance.

The flagged words marked the spots where a fact was missing. Filling those spots is the real edit.

Make it a standing instruction

To avoid repeating yourself, put a short version into ChatGPT's custom instructions, a Claude project, or the equivalent setting in Gemini.

Writing style: plain words, specific claims.
Avoid: delve, leverage, utilize, harness, foster, underscore,
showcase, streamline, elevate, unlock, crucial, pivotal, robust,
seamless, comprehensive, landscape, realm, tapestry, journey,
testament, game-changer.
When you are about to use one of these, state the specific fact
instead, or cut the sentence. Do not swap in a synonym.
No openers about the era or the pace of change. No closing recap.
No em dashes.

The line about synonyms matters most. Without it, a banned "delve" returns as "dig into" in every paragraph. On the dashes: OpenAI said in November 2025 that ChatGPT now follows a custom instruction to avoid em dashes, something it used to ignore (TechCrunch). A standing instruction lowers the rate of stock words. It does not bring it to zero, so the audit pass stays.

Where this breaks

• People wrote these words before 2022. "Crucial" in a colleague's email proves nothing. The Wikipedia guide makes the same point: one or two of these words may be coincidence, and a cluster is the signal. Don't accuse anyone on vocabulary alone.
• Literal and technical uses are fine. Statisticians say "robust," designers say "landscape," and pilots navigate. Cut the figurative use only.
• Scrubbed text can still be empty. A draft with every flagged word removed and no fact added reads cleaner and says just as little.
• Detectors are a different game. Removing these words doesn't reliably change an AI detector's score, and those scores carry real error rates. Edit for the reader.
• The list ages. Review it every few months. When a new favorite shows up in your drafts, add it.

Where we go deeper

Removing the "AI smell" is one block of the second session of our two-week practicum, alongside business correspondence and tone for different readers. We work on real text there, and the useful output is a personal list, because your stock words differ from ours. If your drafts are mostly outreach, the same discipline applies to the prompts in our cold email guide. And if the text is bland before any of these words appear, the cause is usually upstream, in a prompt without context.