Analysis of Rhetorical Patterns in AI Writing

The article discusses the rhetorical device known as negative parallelism, exemplified by the structure 'It's not X; it's Y,' which has become prevalent in AI-generated writing. This construction appears frequently in various contexts, including literature and corporate communications. A report by Barron’s indicated that the use of this phrase in corporate communications increased significantly from 2023 to 2025. Researchers estimate that such sentences appear three times more often in AI writing compared to human writing. The article also notes that while negative parallelism can be effective when used judiciously, it has become formulaic in AI outputs, prompting companies like OpenAI to seek ways to diversify the language models. The persistence of this construction may be due to the training data used for AI models, which includes both high-quality and poor-quality writing. Experts suggest that the reliance on negative parallelism may lead to a cycle where AI continues to reinforce this pattern in its outputs. Despite its drawbacks, the presence of such clichés may help distinguish AI writing from human writing, although it risks making human writers adopt similar patterns.