It's Not X, It's Y: Why AI Chatbots Pick Weird Favorite Phrases

This week, Kimberly and Jessica dig into the AI writing tic everyone's noticed and nobody can fully explain: "it's not X, it's Y." They discuss The Atlantic's new piece on the phrase, then bring Kimberly's informal research from a publicly available corpus of 24-billion words of online news to show the construction is spiking right alongside "crucial" and "quietly." From there the conversation turns to what's actually at stake, including published work pulled from publication because it "sounded like AI," the argument that bad AI output is always a "you" problem, and the bigger question of who gets to decide what human writing is even supposed to sound like anymore.In this episode:The AI "tells" everyone's noticing, and the corpus data behind the hunchShakespeare, Vince Lombardi, and a DiGiorno ad — "it's not X, it's Y" is way older than any chatbotThe Atlantic's theories for why models love this constructionKimberly's own numbers: "not just X, but Y" is up 45% in online news since 2015AI as intermediary, not tool — and the Frontiers in Education paper that explains this"Don't judge the AI, judge the human" — and where that argument breaks downThe novel a publisher pulled over an AI accusationJessica's case that writing is thinking, and what's lost when we skip itPeach and PitLinksThe Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious — Will Oremus, The Atlantic, July 13, 2026. The article that kicks off the episode. NOW Corpus (News on the Web) — BYU’s large, continually updated news corpusTop 10 Most Common Words Used by AI — GPTZeroPublisher pulls horror novel “Shy Girl” over AI concerns — TechCrunchDefining and assessing AI literacy for researchers across the research lifecycle — Parker & Becker, Frontiers in EducationHow Not To Use AI — Abi Awomosu’s SubstackThe book itself — Abi AwomosuWomen Writin’ ’Bout AI — joint SubstackKimberly’s “Linguist in the Wild” Substack English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States — Rosina Lippi-GreenThe Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman, revised and expanded edition, MIT PressLeave us a comment or a suggestion! Support the showContact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/