“You Sound Like AI” is the New “You Sound Like a Robot”

And BOTH are ableist.

I do some of the most fun work on the planet. I love my clients’ visions, I love being part of bringing each goal to life. I love helping people grow, within themselves and their business. But, I have pretty normal days.
Yesterday was such a day; normal days may include insults from totally irrelevant folk, through my work channels. I was blessed with one insult, then: “I don’t appreciate my texts being used in AI, you sound like AI.”

Now, the cliche “You sound like a robot”/”You’re so robotic” is no new reality for autistic folk, myself included. We grow up with intriguing compliments like, “You should be a lawyer”, which I once saw someone put as “another way of saying ‘this kid’s a b*tch.” (I wondered since, how much that was truly accurate? Sound off whether you agree with that!)
Neurodivergent people have been labeled as lazy, rude, selfish, cold, uncaring, analytical, unprofessional (for cosmetic or social reasons, typically) etc. forever. Some of those things overlap with some perceptions of how robots and computers function, and then you get elementary exchanges like “You sound like AI.”

To change the way one speaks is considered masking. Masking means hiding some natural part of yourself, your preferences, needs, personality, in order to better fit in— or avoid “upsetting” or “burdening” anyone. Therapists do not recommend masking.
Masking takes immense energy.
When you’re one-trip-unloading your groceries, you’re not focusing specifically on your pinky that’s clinging to a bag with all its might— but your brain has it as an open tab, running itself in the background. Emotional pains are open tabs. Visual clutter was recently proven to be a brain stressor, as ND brains process ALL information to greater extent; more open tabs.

See what this is building up to?
Ever heard of “meltdown”? Ever been privileged enough to see one, or worse— experience it for yourself?
I digress.

“One does not simply copy & paste from Chat GPT” from Rae Greenip.

“You sound like AI” was a comment made in the context of customer service. In fact, this was followed up with, “You’re speaking to me like customer service.” It sounds like it almost wants to be a nice thing? I had complimented his work, having watched from the time this person first started up, to his product seemingly all over the place. I’m not sure, in this moment, how any of it may have come off as insincere— but as someone growing up being told even my laugh sounds fake, I honestly don’t care to try parsing it, these days.
“Just be yourself” is very freeing. Even in the frustrating or painful moments!~

I want to add the other side of this coin, because I’ve never hidden from anyone who has asked, that I incorporate text-based AI into some of my work— generative (generating images) having been banned entirely within my brands for the past several months, officially. As someone who has clocked 3 hours on a single email, conjuring the perfect words— AI as a tool to organize thoughts and verbalize nuanced, tangled, or enmeshed concepts has nothing to do with someone’s integrity or honesty.
Copy-pasting AI without consideration, failing to fact-check or provide sources for claims or apparent studies, pretending proofreading and fact-checking is a waste of time, staying silent about the harm of current AI datacenters and how much better they could be with some regulation— there are many ways to use AI for the worst, and to easily be a very complicit part of the issue. To assume that anyone (esp. who advocates for ethical, regulated AI) must be a copy-paster is a deeply unserious way to avoid engaging with the actual issue. Which, to be very clear, AI’s environmental, economic, and humanitarian effects demand instant, impactful mandate. That’s a whole other discussion, of course.
The issue today, is accusing someone of being or using AI while you’re speaking with them. A human issue. This is the new version of accusing them of being a robot or robotic. Unless you can give VERY specific examples of something genuinely offensive, there needs to be more compassion and even lacking that— respect is the bare minimum.

For anyone who may not be floating around writing or art groups, I’ll let you in on something wild. There’s been a number of people accusing actual authentic art and writing, even some real bits of music, as being AI-generated. This is not to be confused with Gen Z/A’s “that’s so AI” in reference to something being cheesy, a scam, or just lame, but literally calling out human works as having been generated, rather than crafted through any process.
But I thought we were protecting art? Sounds a bit like the claims we “need to protect women”, so we harm trans people, and end up harming women as well? Anyway… food for thought.

I hope this helps open just one more pair of eyes to the pain you cause when you dehumanize others so casually.
When you minimize their efforts to be polite and professional, communicate clearly and respectfully, and STILL make threats because…. checks notes….. someone was kind to you?
It reeks of provoking for a reaction.
Unfortunately for this person, I was very familiar with them (tearing others in their industry down to appear better), though they asked me AFTER their tirade “Who is this, anyway?” One yike for thee. They say “don’t meet your heroes,” but this wasn’t a hero of mine—just someone I admired for about five minutes, which turned out to be exactly four minutes too long.

Please don’t go around justifying or taking part in casual microagressions and ableism. That’s the message, that’s what I want folks to scroll away with in mind.

Thanks for giving this another read! I can go ahead and spoil the next What the Margins Carried: Dungeon Crawler Carl! We’ll have that up next week.