Summary

Armin Ronacher explores how LLM-generated text is polluting online discourse, from inflated word frequencies in coding sessions that correlate with Google Trends spikes, to AI-generated spam flooding inboxes, social media, and open source projects. He argues that the speed and low cost of producing LLM content creates an arms race with algorithms where genuine human signal is losing. The post warns that beyond mere annoyance, this trend is eroding interpersonal trust—we're starting to distrust real humans who have unconsciously adopted LLM phrasing. He concludes that technology alone won't fix this; we need awareness, transparency about AI use, social pressure against undeclared slop, and deliberate friction in platforms to preserve genuine human interaction.

Key Insight

LLM-generated content isn't just polluting our feeds—it's contaminating human language itself and eroding the fundamental trust that someone on the other end of a conversation actually cares enough to write their own words.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 7

  It's not hard to spot LLM-generated text, but I'm increasingly worried that I'm starting to write like an LLM because I just read so much more LLM text.

• 6

  The moment I start distrusting people I otherwise trust, because they have started picking up LLM phrasing, it erodes trust all over society.

• 8

  The fact that it was cheap for you to produce does not make it cheap for someone else to receive, and we need to find more creative ways to increase the backpressure.

• 8

  I would rather have someone ghost me or reject me than send me back some AI-generated slop.

• 5

  We have known for a long time that certain things should not be easy, because of the misuse that happens.

• 7

  Someone has a formed opinion (hopefully) at lunch, and then has a clanker-made post 3 minutes later.

• 6

  More engagement is increasingly the wrong thing to look at if you want a long term healthy platform.

• 7

  What is being damaged here are social interactions across the board: the assumption that when someone writes to you, there is a person on the other side who has put some care into the interaction.

Tone

critical, reflective, concerned