The phrase “It’s not just this — it’s that” has become increasingly prominent in corporate communications, primarily attributed to the rise of AI-generated content. This phrase, once a simple linguistic construct, has transformed into a hallmark of AI writing, to the point where encountering it now often indicates synthetic authorship.
According to a recent Barron’s report, the usage of this specific phrasing in corporate settings has skyrocketed, showing an increase from approximately 50 instances in 2023 to over 200 by 2025. The news outlet examined data from the market intelligence firm AlphaSense, which highlighted this trend across various corporate communications, including news releases and earnings reports.
The uptick in this construction is not just a peculiar quirk; it reflects a broader epidemic within business writing. Examples from notable companies illustrate this growing trend. For instance, Cisco noted that “in 2025, AI won’t just be a tool; it will be a collaborator.” Similarly, Accenture remarked, “the future of autonomy isn’t just on the horizon; it’s already unfolding,” and Workday pointed out that “DevOps teams are managing not just deployments but also security compliance and cloud spending.”
This repeated syntax is symptomatic of a deeper reliance on generative AI tools in content creation. These AI systems, which have been trained on vast amounts of existing text, tend to reproduce common phrases, thus amplifying certain sentence structures. This has raised concerns among writers and industry professionals who feel that the training data was used without consent, representing a disregard for the creative community.
Beyond the “not just this — it’s that” construction, other writing features, such as em-dashes, have become associated with AI-generative text. This emerging pattern underscores a significant reliance on artificial intelligence in corporate communications, even if the specific examples cited may or may not have been AI-generated.
In summary, when you come across such phrases in corporate messaging, consider that it may signal an over-dependence on AI tools, highlighting not just a trend in language but a shift in how businesses communicate. Such observations encourage reflection on the implications of AI in creative writing, signaling an intersection of technology and language that is evolving rapidly.
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