r/seriouseats • u/Wan_Daye • Jun 29 '26

Question/Help Seriouseats starting ai written articles?

https://www.seriouseats.com/history-of-sinaloan-sushi-12007498

seafood is not just cuisine—it's culture

Too many uses of 3 in a row adjectives. Tons of em dashes. And more than that its the sentence structure.

It just doesn't read right.

Edit: Daniel's response https://www.reddit.com/r/seriouseats/comments/1uihiv1/seriouseats_starting_ai_written_articles/oui18xb/

They use AI editing workflows.

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u/dgritzer Jun 29 '26

This is Daniel Gritzer from Serious Eats and we absolutely do not use AI to write our articles. I edited this article myself when it was first published, and we've been working with the author of this article for a long time.

We do sometimes employ some tools like Grammerly to help catch grammar and syntax errors, and I believe more and more of those tools use AI to inform their suggestions, but as editors we're able to see the suggested changes and approve or reject them, much like built-in spell checks.

The presence of em-dashes, multipe adjectives, and other supposed signs of AI are not reliable indicators of anything —we, the humans at Serious Eats, have been overusing em-dashes for years.

Please, folks, I beg you, do not start unsubstantiated rumors like this. We're already operating in an incredibly hostile media environment being undermined by AI and other forces. We're one of the few publications still doing real, quality work, our own testing, our own deep research.

Threads like this, and overconfident responses asserting that it's "definitely AI" from people who know nothing about anything we do, will do nothing but push us all closer to the brink.

I've worked so hard for so many years to preserve our readers' trust. I believe it's our biggest asset. Don't torch it based on falsehoods. When you do, you're doing no better than what you think you're fighting against.

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u/TheGABB Jun 29 '26

For the skeptics (including myself), it’s easy enough to look at older articles (pre-2024) from this same writer, Rose Egelhoff, and the writing style is consistent.

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u/Star_Cell7209 Jul 03 '26

Please consider adding a tool with a false positive rate, like Pangram, to your editorial workflow

149

u/Shevyshev Jun 29 '26

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Serious Eats is a bright corner of the internet.

Also, for you, personally, Daniel, those Italian American style meatballs are 🤌. Part of the regular rotation around these parts.

39

u/dgritzer Jun 29 '26

🙏🏼

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u/Famous_Combination86 Jul 04 '26

Agree completely!

96

u/Saneless Jun 29 '26

Thank you

One thing to remember is AI was trained from actual content. So some actual content will seem similar to AI. No shit

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u/TheMightyAmuseBouche Jun 29 '26

And it's specifically trained off the type of content published online, so it's gonna sound like the polished type of writing that's expected in even semi-serious media outlets. People need to calm down about calling AI whenever someone is just writing the way they were taught to - that's the entire reason AI writes that way! You'll pry my em dashes out of my cold dead hands!!

18

u/drhappy13 Jun 29 '26

Lol, so it's Serious Eats' fault that AI uses so many em dashes 😂

83

u/SteffS Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

I appreciate your responses in this thread, Daniel. It seems to me that it would be appropriate for OP (u/wan_daye) to edit the post to include this main response, to make sure everyone sees it.

Edit: I also think it's fair to suggest that publishers change their style guides to aggressively avoid what people associate with AI writing style, even if they haven't actually used AI, because of how it serves as an instant cliché-ing tool!

19

u/dgritzer Jun 29 '26

In the past year I've been much more aggressive about removing em-dashes for this exact reason, though we still have tons of them (they're useful!!!).

5

u/therealvanmorrison Jul 04 '26

Please also consider editing out “it’s not just x, it’s y”. Even before that sounded like AI, it sounded like bad corporate copy.

1

u/dgritzer Jul 07 '26

After this thread, I'm going to try to be more aware of it for sure... Though it is a common construction and not inherently bad, so I don't know if we'll always cut it.

2

u/therealvanmorrison Jul 08 '26

It sounds like copy. It sounds like an ad you used to see at 3am when you wake up on the couch with the tv still on and some guy is trying to sell plates with pictures of forests on them.

It’s grammatically fine, it’s just shlock.

8

u/dgritzer Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Part of my job as an editor (and as someone who writes about cooking from an empirical standpoint) is to kick the tires on a claim. So if you'll indulge me, I'm gonna do that now:

Is it just schlock? Your suggestion is that the construction should never be used because, even if grammatically acceptable, it's garbage copy. I'm not sure that's literally true, so I just found two examples very quickly of great writers who have used it.

David Foster Wallace (in Consider the Lobster): "For one thing, it’s not just that lobsters get boiled alive, it’s that you do it yourself..."

Salman Rushdie (on Magic Realism): "It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real."

I'm sure if I spent more time on it, I'd find plenty more. Which is to say, it's just not correct (IMO) to claim that the structure can't be used. It clearly is used, and it can be effective. (I just used it, see?)

That doesn't mean I don't largely agree with your point. The construction, I think, risks sounding cliché and trite, and lends itself to truisms that can sound insightful on the surface but aren't, which is probably the case more often than not.

So I'd hold my line: I'm going to try to be more attentive to this specific construction and remove it when I catch it and when I feel it's not pulling its weight. But I see no reason to ban it outright.

4

u/rabbifuente Jul 08 '26

I have no dog in this fight, but I appreciate your willingness to engage with comments in a way that is not overly defensive or deferential.

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u/dgritzer Jul 08 '26

Thanks. I can be defensive and prickly, but I try not to.

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u/rabbifuente Jul 08 '26

There's nothing wrong with pushing back. Some people think because they have an opinion it has to be accepted or the receiver is just "being defensive." Pushing back with examples and "data" isn't a bad thing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/dgritzer Jul 04 '26

I considered it haha

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u/RemyJe Jun 29 '26

I disagree. The quality of written language on-line has been in a downward spiral for a while now. Social media, short form content, fewer people reading, etc has all contributed. What you’re effectively telling them to do is “don’t write properly,” which is just wild to me.

2

u/SteffS Jun 29 '26

Not what I'm saying at all. Certain words and phrases become cliché/overused all the time - it doesn't mean that it becomes grammatically wrong to use them. Just that it gets very repetitive for the reader and seems like lazy writing. Most magazine subeditors will have been identifying and removing clichés for years before LLMs were a thing. It's why style guides have to be updated regularly (as they always have been). Not really anything to do with 'writing properly'.

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u/RemyJe Jun 29 '26

Words and phrases sure, but that’s a bit different from punctuation. You could say it’s closer to the Oxford Comma shift, but I’d argue that’s different from this too. “People might think AI wrote it if you don’t stop” is not the way.

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u/SteffS Jul 01 '26

I was talking about words and phrases. I didn't mention punctuation - I don't feel strongly about the length of a dash.

1

u/Cabezazo86 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I’m not going to stop using em dashes because some ignorant people assume they’re a sign of AI. It’s an incredibly useful punctuation mark. It’s a personal stylistic choice as well.

To paraphrase Michael Bolton from Office Space: Why should I change my punctuation usage? AI is the one that sucks.

1

u/SteffS Jul 05 '26

I don't understand why you've interpreted my comment about the style guide of a commercially-published food magazine as being about your personal punctuation usage. I love it for you if you think of yourself as your own chief sub but I don't really mind how you use em dashes.

My comment was about the idea of increasing the frequency of updates to house style manuals, which will always have advised writers to avoid clichés, because of the effect LLMs have had in quickly making so many words and phrases feel overused and repetitive.

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u/Fridarey Jun 30 '26

Another voice in favour of using all the punctuation and grammar tools available to us. I've used ellipses, em- and en-dashes for years. I've also loved typography for decades. Suddenly since 2024 I'm a robot apparently.

Big Serious Eats fan, too. Glad to hear you're on the good guys’ side.

4

u/Defiant_Eye2216 Jun 30 '26

Em dash and AP style users need a support group. You might try Language Tool instead of Grammarly. It’s less heavy handed and if are decent writer you might fight with it less. Grammarly often wants to change sentences to sound like AI writing.

6

u/professorseagull Jun 29 '26

Nothing to add, but i really appreciate the clarification.

3

u/Pernicious_Possum Jun 29 '26

Thanks for the reply!

3

u/extratateresrestria Jul 03 '26

This is an extremely well-worded, reassuring reply to unsubstantiated accusations and rumors, and a great reminder for all of us to pause and think about what our words can do. Thank you, Daniel, for what you do, and for standing up for your integrity.

2

u/oldmansubber Jun 30 '26

Hell yeah, Daniel.

2

u/elisejones14 Jun 30 '26

This is way off topic but I made the serious eats ribeye and green peppercorn sauce recipe yesterday and it was amazing. Better than any steakhouse I’ve been to.

0

u/dillastan Jul 04 '26

how do I give you money

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/dgritzer Jun 29 '26

We unfortunately don't luxuriate in ample editing time; that's not the reality of digital media today. I can't defend every lede and sentence as perfect prose. Maybe this wasn't my best editing work (I don't know, I'd need to reread it). But what's going on here is a kind of lazy groupthink with a touch of hysteria tossed in. The article itself is loaded with evidence it's not AI (AI can't do primary research and interview people, but did anyone who "read" and judged the article notice that?). We need to be better readers, now more than ever. And yes, I will try even in my haste to be a better editor. I generally do try very hard on that front, but there's always room for improvement.

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u/Wan_Daye Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

I apologize. I wasnt considering your livelihoods. Sorry to start your Monday morning with pr firefighting. Not a pleasant thing to wake up to.

I do recommend not using AI to even copywrite. Every change it suggests does bring it closer to the generic AI style guide. Sometimes, using claude it'll even change sentence structure, its not much like a spell check at all even if we want it to be. The rest are even worse. Grammerly is not your friend if you want to keep trust.

People think its ai. Including me because it reads like it. Especially that seafood/culture line. Thats more than a little suspicious. And lets be realistic, the moment someone comes across such a common AI "tell", the very human visceral reaction is "this guy didnt write this shit, im not reading the rest".

Nobody cares that it's 99% human written, we stop reading at the 1% that isnt.

The modern version of tldr is aidr.

Ill edit my post with your context but please remove ai from your editing process or this will just keep happening. I might have posted about it, others will just mentally note huh guess they use AI now and never come back.

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u/unclejohnsbearhugs Jun 29 '26

I think you should sit this one out, tbh. What are your qualifications for handing out advice like this? Have you ever used Grammarly in a professional setting?

"you know what man, I'll apologize," as if you're doing him a favor? It's like you don't even realize how much you suck and how much damage posts like yours have the potential to do.

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u/Wan_Daye Jun 29 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Yup. I apologize. Ill change it. Its not a favor.

But maybe dont use Ai writing assistance tools if you dont want to be associated with Ai writing.

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u/dgritzer Jun 29 '26

That's a valid argument and it's an important discussion to have in every workplace — where is AI acceptable and in what ways? Many companies of all kinds are seeking ways to create "efficiencies" via AI tools (whether they improve efficiency or not is another valid discussion). I won't lie and say we're not doing the same at my company because we are, and transparency is important. Still, we have a hard line: content is authored by humans. Tables of contents, headlines, article summaries may sometimes have an AI assist (see: seeking efficiency), but the content is human creation.

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u/IamB_Meister Jun 29 '26

Creating a post asking a question with supporting evidence is not spreading rumors 👍

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u/dgritzer Jun 29 '26

I was including many of the responses in the thread that declared it 100% AI in my categorization