By Mark Murphy
Publication Date: 2026-04-27 12:00:00
Being identified as someone who sends machine-written messages undermines trust and credibility.
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When a manager sends an email that is considered AI-generated, two things happen. The recipient notices it, even if they can’t say why. And from then on, every email from that manager will be read through a different filter.
This is the asymmetric problem of AI writing in professional life. Being identified as a person sending machine-written messages is not a one-time cost. It accumulates. It reinforces. And it’s almost invisible to the person paying for it.
Last month, Leadership IQ launched a free AI writing detector. People immediately started adding their own work. Emails to their bosses. Performance reviews. Political memos. Cold range. LinkedIn drafts. The type of writing that fills a normal work week for any executive.
The submissions yielded a real sample of workplace writing, with each sentence rated as AI-generated, human, or somewhere in between. The patterns that came out were…
