AI Didn’t Break Trust. It Broke the Illusion of Clarity.
These days, we’re surrounded by writing that feels hollow. Sometimes it’s too polished. Sometimes it’s too repetitive. Sometimes it’s just that we know how easy it is now to sound convincing, without actually being present. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. And so we hesitate. We wonder, “Did a human write this?”
We pause because it feels too familiar, too smooth, too easy. It’s uncanny if you know what I mean. But our ability to trust writing didn’t just collapse when ChatGPT came online. What collapsed was our ability to rely on surface-level signals to decide who and what to believe.
We say AI broke trust. What it really broke was our illusion of clarity.
Before AI, when communication broke down, we blamed the speaker. Or more accurately, we blamed how the speaker performed.
We mistook typos and grammar quirks for lack of intelligence; passive voice and jargon for professionalism; confidence for competence (classic us); and second language phrasing or blunt delivery for poor communication.
These were never accurate signals. They were social shortcuts.
And when things didn’t land, we had someone to blame:
“They just weren’t clear.”
“They don’t know how to write.”
“They didn’t sound professional.”
We weren’t practicing discernment. We were practicing compliance detection. Now, anyone can generate “credible” language. Anyone can write in perfect business English. Anyone can sound like someone else.
And with that, we’ve lost our ability to pretend that polish = trustworthiness. We can’t rely on grammar, tone, or “professionalism” as indicators anymore, because those things are available on demand.
So we say, “I don’t know if I can trust this.” But maybe what we mean is, “I don’t know how to trust without my old filters.”
The path forward isn’t to build better detectors. It’s to build better communicators. Good communication has surprisingly little to do with punctuation.
Clarity has never been about polish. It’s been about care:
Do you take responsibility for what you say?
Are you clear about your intent?
Are you willing to clarify when misunderstood?
AI can make communication faster. It can help us code-switch, format, brainstorm, and rewrite. But it can’t carry trust. That still requires us. And in some ways, this is liberating. It means we can finally stop pretending that sounding smart is being smart. That writing “well” is the same as communicating clearly.
We can start designing trust on purpose.
If generative AI stripped away the surface-level cues we used to judge people, good. Let them go.
Let this be the moment where we say:
I don’t need you to write like a CEO. I need you to be honest.
I don’t need you to perform fluency. I need you to mean it.
I don’t need to guess if you’re “real.” I need to know you understand and stand behind what you wrote.
Clarity is care. Ownership is trust. And neither of those can be automated.
[Let’s not forget: AI is trained on the internet, and the internet was never a complete, accurate, or equitable record of thought to begin with. To use these tools well, we have to understand what they reflect and what they erase. Competently using the tool comes from accounting for its limitations.]
Method Minute
Trust is more than detecting AI; it’s built by deciding to be accountable.
If you’re publishing writing (internal, public, generative, whatever) stop worrying about proving it’s “real.” Start showing that it’s owned. Communicate your intent. Disclose your process if it matters. Be willing to clarify instead of escalating when someone misunderstands.
Polish is easy now. Ownership isn’t. But clarity, as ever, is care.
P.S.> Aristotle once wrote that good character, in rhetoric, is not a matter of being but of appearing to be. He couldn’t have imagined a machine that co-authors those appearances with us. But the point still stands: Authenticity was never something we could verify. Only something we could perform. It’s up to us to mean it.