NYU and UT Austin study finds AI models overuse language patterns linked to reading difficulty
andrewaltair · reddit · 2026-10-27
Researchers from NYU and UT Austin analyzed outputs from 14 models across chat, coding, and essay settings, including 980 model-written essays, comparing them against human reference text and round-trip translations as alternative formulations.
The paper tracks six features associated with human processing difficulty: rare n-grams, long dependencies, stacked noun compounds, denominal verbs, and inanimate subjects paired with animate verbs. Most frontier models overused several of these features relative to the paraphrase comparison.
Limitations noted: the study does not identify whether a passage is AI-written or prove all readers find AI text exhausting; it covers English model distributions, uses proxies for difficulty, and treats the training explanation as a hypothesis.
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