• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
AI

Sam Altman says people are starting to talk like AI, making some human interactions ‘feel very fake’

Sydney Lake
By
Sydney Lake
Sydney Lake
Associate Editor
Down Arrow Button Icon
Sydney Lake
By
Sydney Lake
Sydney Lake
Associate Editor
Down Arrow Button Icon
September 9, 2025, 12:13 PM ET
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman isn’t the first person to unpack the fact people are starting to talk more like AI bots in real life
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman isn’t the first person to unpack the fact people are starting to talk more like AI bots in real lifeGetty Images—Andrew Harnik
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.
  • Major AI leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are starting to acknowledge the quirks and pitfalls of their own creations. Altman said AI discussions online often feel “fake” as people are beginning to adopt bot-like language. Researchers have found evidence of ChatGPT influencing people’s vocabulary, and how they write and speak.

Even CEOs of major AI companies are starting to admit the pitfalls and quirks of the technology.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday said he’s had “the strangest experience” reading a Reddit thread about Codex, his company’s new agent tool for developers.

Recommended Video

“I assume it’s all fake/bots, even though in this case I know Codex growth is really strong and the trend here is real,” Altman wrote in a post on X. 

The Reddit thread Altman references is overly positive about OpenAI’s Codex, and even dishes on Anthropic’s Claude Code. 

“I think there are a bunch of things going on,” Altman continued. “Real people have picked up quirks of LLM-speak, the Extremely Online crowd drifts together in very correlated ways, the hype cycle has a very ‘it’s so over/we’re so back’ extremism, optimization pressure from social platforms on juicing engagement and the related way that creator monetization works, other companies have astroturfed us so I’m extra sensitive to it, and a bunch more (including probably some bots).”

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Altman isn’t the first person to unpack the fact people are starting to talk more like AI bots in real life. Hiromu Yakura, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, noticed differences in his own vocabulary about a year after ChatGPT debuted in late 2022. 

Yakura, along with other researchers at the Max Planck Institute, analyzed millions of emails, essays, and other texts, along with hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos and podcast episodes and found a surge of ChatGPT words—like delve, examine, and explore—in the 18 months following the AI tool’s release. 

“The patterns that are stored in AI technology seem to be transmitting back to the human mind,” study co-author Levin Brinkmann, also at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, told Scientific American. 

Another study by the University of California-Berkeley found ChatGPT responses reinforce dialect discrimination. In other words, ChatGPT favors Standard American English, which can frustrate non-American users. That underlines the notion ChatGPT has a standard way of responding to users, which in turn influences the way they speak and write. 

“The net effect is somehow AI Twitter/AI Reddit feels very fake in a way it really didn’t a year or two ago,” Altman said. 

Vaikunthan Rajaratnam, a nerve surgeon and UNESCO chair partner, claimed in a LinkedIn article, however, he’s been working to reverse engineer ChatGPT to actually sound like him. While he said some of the pros of ChatGPT include enriched vocabulary and grammar and added clarity and structure to communication, “diminishing authenticity” was a major pitfall as well as loss of regional dialects and personal voice.

“Through carefully crafted prompts and iterative refinement, I’ve tuned it to reflect my tone, my vocabulary, my way of thinking,” Rajaratnam wrote. “When I use it now—whether it’s to draft newsletters, brainstorm, or write academic pieces—it often sounds eerily familiar… because it sounds like me.”

Still, other executives and billionaires have taken notice of some of the oddities and pitfalls of AI—even if they’re overall relatively keen on the technology. Mark Cuban, former Shark Tank investor and Dallas Mavericks owner, said in a Bluesky post this week there’s one thing AI still doesn’t have: humility. 

“A little solace for the Anti AI crowd,” he wrote. “The greatest weakness of AI is its inability to say ‘I don’t know’.”

“Our ability to admit what we don’t know will always give humans an advantage,” he added.

Subscribe to Fortune Gulf Brief. Every Tuesday, this new newsletter delivers clear-eyed, authoritative intelligence on the deals, decisions, policies, and power shifts shaping one of the world’s most consequential regions, written for the people who need to act on it. Sign up here.
About the Author
Sydney Lake
By Sydney LakeAssociate Editor
LinkedIn iconTwitter icon

Sydney Lake is an associate editor at Fortune, where she writes and edits news for the publication's global news desk.

See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in AI

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in AI

Michael Burry just shorted Caterpillar’s 172% AI rally. One analyst says his bet won’t even matter
Investingstock prices
Michael Burry just shorted Caterpillar’s 172% AI rally. One analyst says his bet won’t even matter
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 2, 2026
5 hours ago
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
EconomyDebt
AI’s $2.2 trillion deficit fix is already half fake, economists say
By Tristan BoveJuly 2, 2026
6 hours ago
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
AIEye on AI
Anthropic’s Fable model is back. But U.S. AI policy is still a mess
By Jeremy KahnJuly 2, 2026
6 hours ago
ai
North AmericaImmigration
Trump’s $46 billion ‘smart wall’ with Mexico bets on AI and scale
By Rebecca Santana and The Associated PressJuly 2, 2026
8 hours ago
sk
AISouth Korea
AI “grief videos” turn mourning into a $390 service in South Korea
By Hyung-Jin Kim and The Associated PressJuly 2, 2026
8 hours ago
Meta’s cloud compute dreams: Why opt for U.S. AI data centers when Saudi Arabia has cheap oil and cheaper power?
Big TechMeta
Meta’s cloud compute dreams: Why opt for U.S. AI data centers when Saudi Arabia has cheap oil and cheaper power?
By Catherina GioinoJuly 2, 2026
12 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
2 days ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
8 days ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
2 days ago
Today, Emily Blunt is worth $80 million thanks to her Hollywood career—but she actually wanted to be a UN Spanish translator on $80K
Success
Today, Emily Blunt is worth $80 million thanks to her Hollywood career—but she actually wanted to be a UN Spanish translator on $80K
By Orianna Rosa RoyleJuly 2, 2026
18 hours ago
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
Politics
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 1, 2026
1 day ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
6 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.