When We All Start Thinking Like AI

I came across a short article the other day, written by a therapist reflecting on their experience with AI. They weren’t trying to be sensational, just describing something nuanced. Over time, they had become aware that their way of thinking had shifted. They were more guarded with language. More formal. More neutral. They chose their words carefully, making sure their descriptions landed in a specific tone: lucid, measured, digestible.

At first glance, this looked like growth. Isn’t that what therapy often demands? Care, thoughtfulness, the ability to step back and reflect before speaking. But as I sat with the piece, something didn’t sit quite right. Not because I disagreed, but because I realised this wasn’t happening in isolation.

It’s happening to all of us.

The Quiet Shift in Voice

Spend an evening browsing social media posts, blogs, newsletters, or even online diary entries, and you might find yourself thinking: Déjà vu. The tone is strangely familiar. Calming, elegant, grammatically correct, emotionally safe. It’s not robotic—not exactly—but it’s clean in a way that feels algorithmic. Not fully human. Not flawed.

So I began to wonder: what happens when hundreds of millions of people start to think, write, and speak like ChatGPT?

What happens when the dominant voice—the one we all eventually begin to imitate—is trained on probabilities, designed to avoid offence, to summarise, to always agree?

At what point do we become culturally voiceless?

Research Proves the Echo

As it turns out, I wasn’t alone in noticing this. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development recently studied the phenomenon and found that people are beginning to emulate ChatGPT’s style—not just in writing, but even in speech. They observed what they called “style convergence”: people unconsciously adopting the AI’s phrasing, sentence structures, and favourite expressions.

Words like delve, meticulous, nuanced, holistic—once reserved for academic or coaching circles—are now everywhere, from Instagram bios to WhatsApp messages. But the real shift isn’t just in vocabulary. It’s in the flow of thought. People are over-explaining. They’re defaulting to the same paragraph rhythm. They’re packaging emotional content in neat, polite, bite-sized lines. Just like AI does.

Another experiment from MIT revealed something even more unsettling. Participants who relied heavily on AI tools like ChatGPT reported a drop in mental effort, originality, and even interest. Over time, they started thinking less. Not just writing less, but outsourcing decisions, ideas, and emotional framing.

The Breakdown of Contrast

This is the real danger. And it has nothing to do with losing jobs or being replaced by machines.

It’s about losing contrast.

When you can no longer tell the difference between a human and machine-generated text—not because the machine is improving, but because we’re beginning to sound like it—something essential begins to erode.

We lose dialect. We lose edge. We lose cultural noise: the kind that makes language pulse with life. Fumbling silences, regional idioms, humour that misfires, emotional inflections that don’t follow rules. All of this is part of human speech. And it’s slowly being cleaned up.

I’m not talking about AI writing your essay. I’m talking about you writing like AI, without even noticing.

The Ironic Effect of Trying to Sound “Smarter”

The irony is that this shift usually starts with good intentions. We turn to AI to write better, think more clearly, and communicate more professionally. And in many ways, it works.

But the cost is subtle. We begin to favour clarity over richness. Polish over personality. Consensus over ambiguity.

Eventually, we start doubting our own loose, half-formed ideas—the ones that aren’t “ChatGPT-ready.” We silence them before they ever reach the page.

This Isn’t a Warning. It’s a Mirror.

I’m not writing this to discourage anyone from using AI. I use it too. In fact, I’m using it to polish this very article. English isn’t my first language, and I find it helpful for clarity and flow. I genuinely value what AI can do.

But this isn’t about rejecting technology. It’s about making sure it doesn’t overwrite our inner rhythm.

Because if we all begin to sound the same, say the same things, and write in the same cadence, something beautiful begins to fade: the distinction between voices.

And when that space narrows, what remains is a world that speaks fluently… but says very little.