Does AI make everyone’s writing sound the same?

Wretify is a clean, minimalist writing app for nonfiction writers, built for focus — with an AI that has read everything you've written and refuses to write it for you.

The short answer

Yes, measurably. When language models polish or rewrite text, the variety of writing narrows: one study of more than 880,000 texts found it shrank by 21–50%. AI suggestions pulled Indian writers toward Western styles, and stories written with AI help were more similar to each other than stories written alone.

How much does AI narrow writing?

Across 7 datasets and more than 880,000 texts, researchers found that while “core content is retained when LLMs polish and rewrite texts”, the models reduced “writing-complexity variance by a statistically significant 21-50%” (Sourati and colleagues, 2026). Different writers came out more alike.

Does AI erase cultural voice?

It can. In a study of 118 writers from India and the United States, “AI suggestions led Indian participants to adopt Western writing styles, altering not just what is written but also how it is written.” A classifier that could tell the two groups apart became less accurate with AI in the loop — from 90.6% to 83.5% overall, and from 82.9% to 60% on one task designed to capture cultural nuance (Agarwal and colleagues, 2025).

Are AI-assisted stories more alike?

Yes. In a study published in Science Advances, stories written with AI ideas were rated more creative individually, but were “more similar to each other than stories by humans alone” (Doshi and Hauser, 2024). What helps one writer can flatten the whole field.

Which words give AI writing away?

Some words spread with AI. In essays from 3,582 participants in a University of Helsinki course, words associated with language models rose significantly as the models spread, and “delve” and “foster” became about ten times more frequent (Leppänen and colleagues, 2025). A sudden house style is a sign the writer was not the only one writing.

How do I keep my own voice?

Write the sentences yourself, and use AI to question them rather than replace them. Keep a record of your own vocabulary — the terms you coined, the words you choose on purpose — and refuse edits that swap them for smoother ones. An AI that won’t write it for you →

Sources

  1. Sourati et al. (2026), The shrinking landscape of linguistic diversity in the age of large language models, Nature Human Behaviour — doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02550-0
  2. Agarwal, Naaman & Vashistha (2025), AI Suggestions Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles, CHI 2025 — doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713564
  3. Leppänen et al. (2025), Emergence of LLMs: (Not-so-)Significant Delving in Essay Answers, AIED 2025 — doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-98465-5_5
  4. Doshi & Hauser (2024), Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content, Science Advances 10(28) — doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn5290

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