How to tell if an article has been written with ChatGPT

Keeping yourself safe online

Something I was surprised to learn as I have scrabbled an income from writing is how common a practice ‘ghost-writing’ really is. It is not only the case that senior politicians rely on speech writers or somebody to help them with their biography – much (not all) of what you read in a mainstream news organisation, take the Telegraph as an example, has been written either by a hapless Parliamentary Assistant, or the Editorial staff has been given a set of bullet points to work on a draft from. This does not only apply to politicians but also to senior columnists at these organisations.

The worst offenders tend to be individuals with no writing experience who have received their plum sinecures because of their background - be it in ‘our Armed Forces’ - or diverse women whom contentious opinions can be laundered through. It seems that once you have a big enough brand you can quietly quit from any of the hard work and just fling it at a twenty-something subordinate. This seems to be the usual trajectory of most careers - a senior partner at a law firm does not busy themselves with first drafts of reports or due diligence - and Trump himself used a ghost-writer to produce Art of the Deal. I’m surprised, not angry, to find out just how widespread the practice is, after all, it does essentially align with my commercial interests.

What does not align with my commercial interests, and so must be crushed, is the recent trend I have seen of politicians and organisations blatantly using ChatGPT to produce this copy. X is completely saturated with MPs and former MPs using AI to write their posts but it is also shockingly widespread in once esteemed news organisations.

J’accuse’s USP cannot be explicated in a single language, let alone a single turn of phrase, but if one adjective captured it all it would be ‘originality’, and so the homogenisation of the written word into LLM hallucination slop is something we must rail against. In that spirit, I would like to draw readers attention to a public statement that the Police Federation issued to the Telegraph under the name ‘Tiff Lynch’, which I can immediately tell was written using AI and barely edited, if at all. The only thing they have managed to do is remove the Em Dashes (—). I have annotated the text in bold so readers know what to look out for.

Exhausted officers cannot continue to hold the line indefinitely
Tiff Lynch

The disorder in Epping – where police officers were pelted with bricks and bottles outside an asylum hotel – was not just a troubling one-off. It was a signal flare. A reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it. J: This is a typical syntax that ChatGPT will use when making a point. “It was not XXX - It was X”.

Last summer’s civil unrest exposed the deep fragility within our public order policing system.

The gaps were plain to see: mutual aid stripped to the bone, co-ordination between forces lacking, and a total failure to anticipate how disorder is now sparked and fuelled online. J:ChatGPT is a big believer in the ‘magic of three’ and will use lists like this incessantly. Officers were left to face missiles with little more than a shield and a short briefing. J: Very odd, almost whimsical rhetoric which is far too casual for an official statement by a representative body. The risks were there in black and white, yet little has improved since. J:Notice how every sentence in this paragraph is self-contained with no asides or digressions.

Instead of strengthening our front line, we are continuing to sap its energy. J:This is a ‘signposting transition’ which LLMs use mechanically when it has a list of points it has to make. More than 1,500 officers have been pulled from local forces to police a private visit by the US president. J: This is the only statistic in the piece, a human who had researched it would have used far more. This was not a state occasion, it was a leisure trip. J:Again, repetition of ‘not X, X’. While he plays golf, communities hundreds of miles away are left without coverage, and already exhausted public order units are stretched even further. J: Did the Policing Federation mean to attack Trump for playing Golf? Did anybody read this before it went out?

It would be comical if it weren’t so serious – and so familiar. Another classic LLM rhetorical turn of phrase. Local commanders are once again being forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps.

Meanwhile, anger is building. Every other public sector profession, from NHS staff to teachers and the Armed Forces, has had its annual pay award confirmed. J: Human would use terms like ‘Doctors and Nurses’. Police officers, alone, are still waiting. With just weeks before the new pay period begins, there has been nothing but silence. J: More overwrought, inappropriate rhetorical flourishes.

It’s hard not to see that delay as calculated – an attempt to avoid fuelling discontent in a workforce already under strain. If that’s the plan, it is both cynical and dangerous. Officers don’t need a message of reassurance. They need action and respect. J: Don’t want X, want X.

Through our Copped Enough campaign, we hear from officers who are at breaking point. Working relentless overtime, not as a choice but as an expectation. J: This is the only part of the statement which uses a proper name. If this had been done by a human it would be full of references. There should be much more technical jargon. Taking second jobs to keep up with rising costs. Watching friends and colleagues walk away because the personal toll has become too great. J: A human would use an example or ‘we all know colleagues who have left’ etc.

Behind each uniform is a person – someone with a family, responsibilities, and limits. J: rule of three. When officers are stretched to breaking point, the effects ripple far beyond the front line. It impacts home lives, mental health and long-term well-being. J: rule of three. These are not just statistics or headlines. These are real people carrying the weight of a system in crisis. J: It’s not X, it’s X.

This goes far beyond pay. This is about whether the country still values the men and women who step forward when everything else breaks down. J: Not about X, about X. Right now, many of them feel utterly abandoned.

Policing cannot function on goodwill alone. Public order requires planning, investment and leadership. J: Rule of three. But officers are being pulled in every direction, asked to do more with less, and left in the dark about their future – all while being quietly sacrificed for short-term convenience. J: Repetition of points made previously. Probably to fill a word count.

They will turn up. They always do. J: staccato short sentences. But it is dangerous to assume that they can continue to hold the line indefinitely, without the support they need or the recognition they deserve.

A summer of further unrest is not inevitable. But it becomes far more likely if we once again fail to prepare. J: typical ‘crescendo ending’ which LLMs default to which summarises the main points.

By point of comparison, here is a statement issued by the Devon and Cornwall Police Federation Chair Andy Berry in 2021 (before LLMs) which was also relevant to police officer’s pay:

I am pleased that as a Federation National Council comprising of representatives from the 43 forces in England and Wales that we have been able to speak with a single voice to say to the Home Secretary that we do not have any confidence in her ability to have the overall command of the Police Service in England and Wales. She let us down during the COVID crisis by not intervening to ensure that officers were prioritised for vaccination and she has again let us down by interfering with the so called independent Pay and Remuneration Review Body (PRRB).

The PRRB was established following the review into policing which was led by Sir Tom Winsor and from the outset it was clear that it was not truly independent since the employer, the Home Secretary, set the terms of what can be reviewed each year and ultimately can decide to ignore the recommendations if they don’t like them. As a Chair I have always believed that you had to be in it to win it but with the cynical and blatant interference by the Home Secretary this year it has become clear that we cannot continue to give credibility to this charade.

I believe that all other interested parties who engage with the PRRB should now withdraw from the process. Indeed, the report of the PRRB itself de-cries the fact that it’s independence has been fettered and so I firmly believe that the Chair and board members of the PRRB should now resign to prevent their good names being tarnished by further association with this discredited system.

Police officers knowingly give up certain employment rights to become servants of the Crown but in doing that we expect to be treated fairly and I honestly believe that the public will want us to be treated fairly. A big part of this fairness is to have a pay review body that is fair and wholly independent of the Government. We are not asking for guaranteed pay rises, we are not asking for a review body that will always agree with us but we can no longer be part of a system which is rigged against us.

The gulf in readability is remarkable. I felt genuinely quite stirred in their favour reading it. To finally hammer the point home, I have asked ChatGPT to produce a hypothetical statement from the BMA on Doctor’s strikes - see if you can recognise the LLMisms for yourself.

The decision to strike is never easy — but it is sometimes unavoidable. Doctors do not step away from their patients lightly. We joined this profession to heal, to serve, to be there in people’s most difficult moments — and yet we are being driven to the point where continuing as we are would do more harm than good.

For over a decade, our pay has been eroded — falling by more than a quarter in real terms — while the demands on us have only intensified. A&E departments are overwhelmed, wards are chronically understaffed, and waiting lists grow longer by the day. Doctors are working harder than ever, often sacrificing their health and their family lives, to keep the NHS going. But the system cannot survive on goodwill alone — and goodwill is all that’s being asked of us.

Striking is not about greed. It’s about fairness — and it’s about safety. Exhausted doctors make mistakes. Overstretched teams cannot provide the care patients deserve. Every week, we see colleagues walk away from the profession because they can no longer cope with the pressure. When that happens, everyone loses: patients, staff, and the NHS itself.

We’ve tried to fix this without industrial action. We’ve sat at the negotiating table, proposed reasonable solutions, and sought a fair settlement. Yet the government has stalled, delayed, and offered token gestures that don’t even begin to address the scale of the problem.

Behind every striking doctor is a story — of missed birthdays and anniversaries, of second jobs taken just to keep up with the cost of living, of the impossible choice between staying in the job they love or protecting their own health. These are not statistics. They are people — people who keep the NHS running, often at enormous personal cost.

We are striking because we believe in the NHS. Because we want it to be a service that patients can rely on, staffed by doctors who are properly supported, properly valued, and properly paid. Because doing nothing would mean watching it decline — and that is something we cannot accept.

The government has a choice: invest in the workforce, restore trust, and secure the future of the NHS — or continue down a path that will see it crumble. We urge them to do the right thing.

Until then, we stand together — for ourselves, for our patients, and for the health service we are proud to serve.

I hope that you, the reader, are a fellow lover of a well-constructed Argument, and will rail against this bowdlerisation of the English Language by holding known individuals to account when they lean on AI to fill copy. ‘Tiff Lynch’, who is Deputy Chair of the Police Federation, is part of the generation which has benefited most from Woke. A middle aged woman (celebrated by the Police Federation for being the second female national chair) who hasn’t had to work since lockdown - as the ‘Work From Home’ scam has transitioned effortlessly to using ChatGPT to earn her hefty salary, no doubt buttressed by a ludicrous public sector pension scheme. Don’t stand for it. We are paying for their indolence.