The Most Common AI Words and Phrases — the Exact List Our Detector Flags

Where This List Comes From

Most "words AI overuses" articles are vibes. This one is source code. Our free AI content detector scores text against six transparent signals, and three of them are pattern lists you can read below — the same regular expressions the tool runs in your browser, translated into plain English. Our humanizer's analysis stage hunts the same patterns before rewriting.

Publishing the list doesn't break the detector, because of how the scoring works: it measures density, not presence. Knowing the words doesn't help machine-flavored text; only actually writing differently does. More on that at the end.

The Cliché List: Openers and Throat-Clearing

The single most AI-flavored category — phrases that announce a point instead of making it:

• "It's important / crucial / essential / vital to note that..."
• "It's worth noting / mentioning / highlighting that..."
• "Please note that..." and standalone "Notably,"
• "It's clear / evident / apparent that..."
• "Needless to say" / "Suffice it to say" / "It goes without saying"
• "Rest assured" / "Allow me to..."
• "Without further ado"

Every one of these can be deleted from a sentence with zero information loss. That's the definition of throat-clearing — and the model does it constantly because polite preamble was rewarded in training.

The Cliché List: Scene-Setting and the Delve Family

• "Let's delve / dive into..." and bare "delve into"
• "Embark on (a journey)..."
• "Explore the intricacies / nuances / complexities of..."
• "In today's fast-paced / digital / modern / ever-changing world"
• "In the modern / current / digital era" and "in the realm of..."
• "When it comes to..."
• "The fact of the matter is that..."

These are the openers. The model needs a runway before saying anything; humans mostly just say the thing. (The full ChatGPT vocabulary story — including the documented post-2022 spike of "delve" in academic abstracts — gets its own post.)

The Cliché List: Hype Words and Conclusion Crutches

• Hype: groundbreaking, revolutionary, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, game-changer, paradigm shift, synergy, holistic, seamlessly, "innovative solution," "pivotal role," "actionable insights," "key takeaways"
• Endings: "In conclusion," "In summary," "To summarize," "To wrap up," "All in all," "To sum up"
• Structural filler: "First and foremost," "Last but not least," "At the end of the day"

The hype set triggers reader skepticism even when no one suspects AI — inflated language with no specifics underneath is bad writing regardless of author. The conclusion set is pure template: a human ending an argument lands on their strongest point; the model reaches for "In conclusion" the way a school essay does.

The Hedging List

Seventeen patterns of non-commitment, scored as their own signal:

• "could potentially" / "may potentially" / bare "potentially"
• "seems to" / "appears to" / "might suggest" / "this may suggest"
• "it could be argued that" / "it is possible that"
• "in many ways" / "in a sense" / "to some extent" / "somewhat"
• "in certain cases / situations / circumstances"
• "generally speaking" / "broadly speaking"

Hedging is the quietest tell and one of the most reliable. Models hedge because committing risks being wrong, and training punished wrong more than vague. Humans with actual knowledge commit: "this works" rather than "this could potentially prove beneficial in certain circumstances."

The Formal Transition List

• furthermore · moreover · additionally · in addition
• consequently · as a result · therefore · thus · hence · accordingly · subsequently
• nevertheless · nonetheless · in contrast · on the other hand
• "it is worth noting" · "it should be noted" · "it is important to" · "it is essential to"

None of these words is wrong. The pattern is one of them opening every second sentence — connective tissue standing in for actual logical connection. Our detector counts distinct transition types per 100 words; human prose rarely needs more than a couple.

Why Density Beats Presence: How the Scoring Actually Works

Here's the part that separates measurement from word-policing. In our detector, these three lists together account for less than half the score — cliché density carries a weight of 20, transitions 15, hedging 12, out of 100. The single heaviest signal, at 35, is sentence-length uniformity — no word list at all, just the burstiness math of whether your sentences vary like a human's. Passive-voice ratio and repeated sentence openers make up the rest.

Every list-based signal is normalized per 100 words, so one "furthermore" in a long essay moves nothing, while five in two paragraphs light up. And the tool reports each signal separately with its reasoning, because a style score is never proof of authorship — that's a lesson black-box detectors keep teaching the hard way.

Practical use: paste your draft in, see which of these lists actually fired, and fix the pattern rather than the word. Or let the humanizer run that edit — it targets this exact inventory, then you add the specifics only you know.