{"id":15717,"date":"2026-04-24T17:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/15717\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:36:11","slug":"ai-in-corporate-communications-the-its-not-x-its-y-phrase-giving-ceos-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/15717\/","title":{"rendered":"AI in corporate communications: The “it’s not X, it’s Y” phrase giving CEOs away"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you ever catch us using the following phrasing, trust that it was written by a human who was just tired that day: Experts say the sentence structure \u201cit\u2019s not X<\/a>, it\u2019s Y\u201d is a classic indicator of AI-generated writing, and its usage in corporate communications has\u00a0spiked<\/a>, Barron\u2019s recently reported.<\/p>\n

For example,\u00a0\u201cOur ship is not just on the horizon\u2014it is coming in,\u201d as Citizens Financial Group<\/a> said in its 2025 shareholder letter, or \u201cEngineering AI\u2019s future is not just a software challenge, it\u2019s a physics challenge,\u201d as Synopsys\u2019s CEO said on a December earnings call. Both companies told Barron\u2019s that their corporate communications teams use AI assistance.<\/p>\n

Across large US companies:<\/p>\n

Barron\u2019s spotted this phrasing in 208 documents last year, up from 100 in 2024 and 49 in 2023.<\/p>\n

Companies using the phrase of late include Progressive<\/a>, Royal Caribbean, Coca-Cola<\/a>, Dollar Tree<\/a>, Cisco, Accenture<\/a>, Workday, McKinsey<\/a>, Microsoft<\/a>, and Schwab.<\/p>\n

But\u2026it\u2019s \u201cno smoking gun for AI use,\u201d an AI detection company\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0TechCrunch. The phrase may simply be a hallmark of AI writing because it was already such a linguistic clich\u00e9. Schwab told Barron\u2019s that the quote it identified was \u201c100% human-generated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless\u2026studies show that this sentence structure can\u00a0backfire<\/a>\u00a0by causing our brains to focus on the wrong thing.\u2014ML<\/p>\n

This report<\/a> was originally published by Morning Brew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2001, Fortune first convened \u201cThe Smartest People We Know,\u201d bringing together CEOs and founders, builders and investors, thinkers and doers. Since then, Fortune Brainstorm Tech has been the place where bold ideas collide. From June 8\u201310, we will return to Aspen\u2014where it all began\u2014to mark 25 years of Brainstorm. Register now<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you ever catch us using the following phrasing, trust that it was written by a human who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[580,743,2878,11639,3775,5119,157],"class_list":{"0":"post-15717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-openai","8":"tag-chatgpt","9":"tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","10":"tag-communication","11":"tag-communications","12":"tag-earnings","13":"tag-morning-brew","14":"tag-openai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}