A ‘comprehensive’ guide to the ‘vital’ words that will mark you as an AI cheat

As a testament to language change, let’s delve into the tapestry of modern English. By now your alarm bells should be clanging. There’s something off-key about that first sentence, but what? Maybe it’s the wonky metaphor, since delving is reserved for earth or pockets or even the past – not tapestries.

Or perhaps the glitch is tone, the prose a little purple. As a hint, let’s meet Dr Jeremy Nguyen, a senior researcher and lecturer at the Swinburne Business School, who last year sifted some 39 million citations from biomedical literature, looking for instances of “delve”.

Robot-writing has invaded the system – and notably, AI has its giveaway words. Like, “notably”.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Yes, an academic delve into delve, a word adored by chatbots, as Nguyen had gleaned, along with “testament” and “tapestry” – the AI trifecta when it comes to medical screeds. The survey revealed all three had spiked in usage, with delve appearing in 0.5 per cent of all articles on the PubMed site (a database of clinical writing), compared with a minimal 0.1 per cent in 2022. Tapestry and testament were just as rife.

Not long ago, examiners relied on piracy software to detect which students were cribbing their analyses of Othello’s fatal flaw, checking whether Student A was vacuuming Wikipedia or Student B was duplicating the work of Student C. No doubt they still do that, except that lately the task has turned messier with robot-writing invading the system, less piracy than conspiracy.

Nguyen noted delve for its poetic vibe, a Heaney-like glimmer in the AI generative grey. For its aptness too, as the Large Language Models (or LLMs) that chatbot software needs for its vocab are pretty much quarrying our own human material on a Pilbara scale. The minute the Swinburne research blew the whistle, a cheeky post on ChatGPT’s official X account admitted, “Don’t mind me, just doing some delving today.”

Testament and tapestry also claim a Shakespearean glamour, both gallant bids to counter the more functional nuts and bolts of prose generation. Other prime suspects in the output audit are “vibrant”, “landscape”, “realm”, “embark”, “excels”, “vital”, “comprehensive” and “intricate”. Dare you to use all 10 in a sentence.

Or don’t, as you’ll only be accused of being an algorithm’s accomplice, since current examiners are as likely to be scouting for these mechanical Easter eggs, along with the fancier transitions of “moreover”, “arguably” and “notably”. Not that Nguyen’s paper isolated that last group. Rather the intel came from Google Overview, essentially a robot dobbing on a robot, echoing Roman poet Juvenal’s words of 2000 years ago: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who guards the guardians?)”

Where Juvenal’s satirical dig – sorry, delve – was originally aimed at corrupt city officials trusted to root out corruption in 100AD, the question now seems all the more acute in 2025 as a linguistic coup is offering its own surveillance advice. Quis verba verborum factorum custodit? (Who guards the words of the word creators?)

Mayhem seems imminent. Where’s Philip K. Dick when we need him? As the future unfolds and virtual writers keep rising, I can picture shady students swapping testament for “will”, delve for “excavate”, eager to camouflage their imported text, just as jaded tutors will fossick for “notably” or “embark” because DeepBlue’s Deep Throat told them such words were smoking guns. Moreover, the issue is one intricate tapestry.

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