The digital world is awash in text, and increasingly, it's hard to tell who – or what – is doing the writing. But a group of vigilant Wikipedia editors, initially focused on keeping AI-generated articles off the online encyclopedia, may have inadvertently sparked a new arms race in the quest to make artificial intelligence sound, well, more human.

Since late 2023, the volunteers of WikiProject AI Cleanup, spearheaded by French Wikipedia editor Ilyas Lebleu, have been on the hunt for AI-authored content infiltrating the platform. They've tagged over 500 articles for review, becoming intimately familiar with the telltale signs of AI writing. In August 2025, they formalized their observations into a publicly available guide, a detailed list of linguistic and formatting patterns that betray a chatbot's hand.

This guide, intended to help identify and remove AI-generated content, has now found an unexpected second life. Tech entrepreneur Siqi Chen recently released "Humanizer," an open-source plug-in for Anthropic's Claude Code AI assistant. This simple tool feeds Claude the Wikipedia editors' list of 24 chatbot giveaways, essentially instructing the AI to avoid these patterns and mimic human writing more effectively.

"It's really handy that Wikipedia went and collated a detailed list of signs of AI writing," Chen wrote on X. "So much so that you can just tell your LLM to not do that."

The implications of this development are significant. On one hand, it highlights the increasing sophistication of AI and its ability to adapt and learn. On the other, it raises concerns about the potential for AI to deceive and manipulate, blurring the lines between human and machine-generated content.

The WikiProject AI Cleanup's guide identifies patterns like overly formal language, repetitive sentence structures, and a tendency to avoid contractions. These are all characteristics that, while not inherently wrong, often mark AI writing as distinct from human prose. By training AI to avoid these patterns, tools like Humanizer could make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between authentic human writing and sophisticated AI mimicry.

"The challenge is that AI is constantly evolving," says Dr. Anya Sharma, a professor of computational linguistics at Stanford University. "As AI models become more sophisticated, they will inevitably learn to mimic human writing styles more convincingly. This creates a constant cat-and-mouse game between those trying to detect AI-generated content and those trying to make it undetectable."

The development also raises ethical questions. Is it ethical to use AI to deliberately mimic human writing? What are the potential consequences of a world where it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between human and machine-generated content?

The use of AI to "humanize" chatbots could have far-reaching implications for various sectors, from marketing and customer service to journalism and education. Imagine AI-powered chatbots that can seamlessly engage in conversations, write compelling marketing copy, or even generate news articles that are indistinguishable from those written by human journalists.

While the Wikipedia editors' guide was initially intended to combat the spread of AI-generated misinformation, it has inadvertently provided a valuable tool for those seeking to enhance the capabilities of AI. As AI continues to evolve, it is crucial to consider the ethical and societal implications of these developments and to develop strategies for ensuring transparency and accountability in the age of artificial intelligence. The line between human and machine is blurring, and it's a conversation we need to have now.