Spend a few minutes scrolling through LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and other social channels and you'll likely notice something….Words like "honestly", "genuinely", "to be fair", and "if I'm being completely honest" seem to be appearing everywhere.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe we're all becoming more open online…? Or maybe it's a symptom of something much bigger - the rise of AI-generated content.
The New ‘Authenticity’
Over the last few years, there’s no getting away from the fact that AI has transformed content creation. Anyone can now generate polished social posts, articles, emails, and marketing copy in seconds. The quality can be impressive. The grammar (if you remove the em-dashes and American English) is spot on and the structure is clean (if not a little formulaic).
The problem, then? A lot of it sounds remarkably similar.
As audiences become increasingly exposed to AI-generated content, they're also becoming more sensitive to anything that feels generic, corporate, or emotionally detached. In response, creators and brands are searching for ways to show that there's a real person behind the words.
This is where language like "honestly" and "genuinely" comes in. These words act as authenticity markers, telling readers that:
"This is my real opinion."
"I'm speaking from experience."
"This isn't just another polished piece of content."
Whether consciously or unconsciously, many creators are using these phrases to establish trust and create a stronger human connection.
The irony? AI may be driving this trend too!
The increase in these words may not simply be a human reaction to AI. It may well also be caused by AI itself. Large language models (LLMs) are trained on enormous amounts of human-written content. Through that training, they learn patterns associated with sincerity, vulnerability, and personal storytelling.
Words like "honestly" and "genuinely" frequently appear when humans are expressing personal opinions or emotional experiences. As a result, AI systems often reproduce these patterns because statistically they resemble authentic communication.
In other words:
Humans use these words to prove they're not AI. AI then uses these words because it has learned that's how humans signal authenticity. So, when someone is creating content with the help of AI, but doesn’t want it to sound like AI and asks it to ‘sound authentic’, this is what comes out and everyone starts sounding increasingly similar.
So why should we pay attention to this upsurge in ‘Authenticity’?
For brands, it creates a challenge of balance. If every post begins with "Honestly..." or "Genuinely...", those words eventually lose their power. Authenticity isn't something that can be declared, it's something that has to be demonstrated.
The brands that stand out aren’t the ones using more ‘authenticity signals’. They're the ones providing genuine evidence of authenticity. It’s very much a case of ‘actions speak louder than words’. There are plenty of ways to show authenticity….sharing real customer stories, publishing original insights rather than recycled opinions, talking openly about lessons learned or mistakes made, not in a ‘trauma dump’ and ‘now smashing it’ kind of way, but in a vulnerable and educational way. These are far more sincere than simply adding a few conversational qualifiers to a post.
The future of authentic content
As AI becomes a permanent part of marketing workflows, audiences will continue to develop a stronger instinct for content that feels machine produced. The solution isn't to abandon AI, because used well, it can be an incredibly helpful tool. The solution is to ensure AI enhances human perspectives, rather than replacing them. The most effective content in the coming years will combine the efficiency of AI with something AI cannot easily replicate: genuine experience, unique viewpoints, and original thinking.
So the next time you find yourself writing "honestly" or "genuinely", it might be worth asking yourself... does this word make the content feel more authentic? Or would a more authentic story do that job better…?
