alt Hacker NewsI think it is great that people point out LLM generated articles here on HN. Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content... So, please, list the indicators and telltale signs from the specific article or blog post (like others have done here already). At least I would appreciate it a lot.
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I know, right? It used to be easy: just look for writing in a very long-winded style, almost as if the author is being paid per word, in a place where that sort of writing didn't belong. I think it was because that type of writing represented a disproportionate fraction of the tokens in the training data due to the long-winded-ness. Somewhere around a year ago, they figured out some way to deal with that problem.
Straight quotes were my first clue, followed by “it’s not this it’s that” and subheads.
I think it will become pretty simple. Does the author say somewhere on their site that they don't use AI for writing? If yes, then great. Otherwise, it's very likely LLM-generated — particularly if the author spends a lot of time writing positively about AI. (And what if they lie? They will be discovered eventually, at which point they can be blacklisted.)
The em-dashes
> Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak.
Just read a few fiction books written in 2026 in Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Your brain will be trained to recognize AI-Slop Speak in No Time.
Specific article aside, you may be interested in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AISIGNS
https://github.com/blader/humanizer/blob/main/SKILL.md#conte...
The multiple uses of "it's worth X" made me question the authorship, for one
> It is not age verification. It is identity verification.
> You can change a password. You cannot change your face.
> This is not a popularity contest, and refusal is not a vote you are trying to win
These were a couple sentences that were immediate flags to me. There've been countless articles written on this (I can dig them up if you want), but IMO there are pretty clear semantic rhythms you start to notice.
It is not foo, it is bar. You can zip, you cannot zap.