Is AI Making Us Sound More Male?

I wrote a blog recently and a colleague kindly ran it through CoPilot for suggestions on how to increase its impact.

I was not keen on the changes. The revised version was clearer in some ways, but it had also lost something important: my voice. The humanity had been stripped out. The blog sounded more polished, but less like me. One of the suggestions was particularly interesting.

Remove “I’ve noticed” and replace it with clearer, more confident statements. I found that fascinating.

Because there was no lack of confidence in the original. In fact, I would argue that saying “I’ve noticed” is often a confident thing to do. It tells the reader that the point comes from observation, experience and professional judgement. That is part of the work. Clients do not only pay me for neat statements. They pay me for insight. For noticing patterns. For making sense of what is happening in teams, organisations and leadership conversations.

Later that same day, I happened to be speaking to a friend who was reading a book about the ways women are often said to “water down” their language at work.

You know the sort of thing.

“I think…”
“I’ve noticed…”
“I wonder if…”
“Could we consider…?”

These phrases are often framed as lacking authority. But I am not convinced that is always true. Sometimes this language is not weak at all. Sometimes it is relational, thoughtful and precise. Sometimes it leaves room for context. Sometimes it invites conversation rather than shutting it down.

The problem may not be that the language is watered down. The problem may be that certain workplaces, especially male-dominated ones, have decided that authority only sounds one way.

Deborah Tannen explores this brilliantly in The Power of Talk, which I still think should be compulsory reading in workplaces. She looks at how conversational style, status, gender and power can shape how people are heard at work.

And that is what made me pause. Was CoPilot really helping me write with more impact? Or was it nudging me towards a narrower version of authority?

More direct.
More declarative.
Less personal.
Less observational.
Less human.

In other words, was it advising me to sound more male? Or at least more palatable to an audience that has learned to associate confidence with a particular style of communication?

That does not mean AI is useless for writing. It can be helpful for structure, clarity, repetition and editing. But I do think we need to be careful. Because if we accept every suggestion uncritically, we may end up smoothing away the very things that make our writing credible, distinctive and human.

Needless to say, we went back to the original. And it has made me even more cautious about using AI to “improve” writing.