[Ads-l] Word: humanizer (adding the pseudo-human touch to AI output)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Back in March 2026, I wrote about the word "humanizer" referring to an
AI tool, but I should have mentioned that a human can also work as a
"humanizer".

Website: New York Times
Article: Kenyans Did College Students' Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived.
Authors: Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur (Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya)
Date: September 5, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/technology/kenya-college-essays-ai.html

[Begin excerpt]
Yet what jobs remain in essay writing are mainly for "humanizers," who
edit papers written by A.I. to avoid detection from the cheating
software used by many universities.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 2:32 AM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Website: The New Yorker (newyorker.com)
> Article: How Bad Is Plagiarism, Really?
> Author: Anthony Lane
> Date: March 22, 2026
>
> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/30/strikingly-similar-roger-kreuz-book-review
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> For students with assignments to complete, who have already vanquished
> their desolation by asking ChatGPT to compose an essay on their
> behalf, a humanizer is an A.I. tool that takes what has been produced,
> puts it through a further digital mill, and makes it sound as if it
> had emerged from a verifiable person. Among the companies that offer
> such tools are StealthWriter, HIX AI, and QuillBot. (If Nabokov had
> written science fiction, his villain would have been called Quillbot.)
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson

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