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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/new-ai-plugin-uses-wikipedias-ai-writing-detection-rules-to-help-it-sound-human/ [arstechnica.com]

On Saturday, tech entrepreneur Siqi Chen released [github.com] an open source plugin for Anthropic’s Claude Code [arstechnica.com] AI assistant that instructs the AI model to stop writing like an AI model. Called “Humanizer,” the simple prompt plugin feeds Claude a list of 24 language and formatting patterns that Wikipedia editors have listed [wikipedia.org] as chatbot giveaways. Chen published the plugin on GitHub, where it has picked up over 1,600 stars as of Monday.

“It’s really handy that Wikipedia went and collated a detailed list of ‘signs of AI writing,’” Chen wrote [x.com] on X. “So much so that you can just tell your LLM to… not do that.”
[...]
Chen’s tool is a “skill file [claude.com]” for Claude Code, Anthropic’s terminal-based coding assistant, which involves a Markdown-formatted file that adds a list of written instructions (you can see them here [github.com]) appended to the prompt fed into the large language model (LLM) that powers the assistant. Unlike a normal system prompt [arstechnica.com], for example, the skill information is formatted in a standardized way that Claude models are fine-tuned to interpret with more precision than a plain system prompt. (Custom skills require a paid Claude subscription with code execution turned on.)
[...]
So what does AI writing look like? The Wikipedia guide is specific with many examples, but we’ll give you just one here for brevity’s sake.

Some chatbots love to pump up their subjects with phrases like “marking a pivotal moment” or “stands as a testament to,” according to the guide. They write like tourism brochures, calling views “breathtaking” and describing towns as “nestled within” scenic regions. They tack “-ing” phrases onto the end of sentences to sound analytical: “symbolizing the region’s commitment to innovation.”

To work around those rules, the Humanizer skill tells Claude to replace inflated language with plain facts and offers this example transformation:

Before: “The Statistical Institute of Catalonia was officially established in 1989, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of regional statistics in Spain.”

After: “The Statistical Institute of Catalonia was established in 1989 to collect and publish regional statistics.”
[...]
even though most AI language models tend toward certain types of language, they can also be prompted to avoid them, as with the Humanizer skill. (Although sometimes it’s very difficult, as OpenAI found in its yearslong struggle [arstechnica.com] against the em dash.)

Also, humans can write in chatbot-like ways. For example, this article likely contains some “AI-written traits” that trigger AI detectors even though it was written by a professional writer—especially if we use even a single em dash—because most LLMs picked up writing techniques from examples of professional writing scraped from the web.

[My initial reaction was, nice a way to filter out the AI slop! And there's a plugin! When in reality, it's a plugin to help the Claude LLM sound less like an AI. So, the deep dark bad path, got it. Too much optimism, I guess.]

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