It’s not just one thing – it’s something else

Sometimes, things aren’t one thing – they’re something else. Making these sentences (“It’s not that – it’s that”) has become so common in AI-generated writing that now, it’s no longer a guarantee that a piece of writing might be artificial – almost a guarantee.

That’s why I wasn’t impressed when I saw it Barron’s report about how the construction of these sentences has increased in corporate communication – I was very impressed. The report didn’t just report on the prevalence of these terms in company speech – it analyzed market intelligence firm AlphaSense’s database to find how often the term was used in corporate news releases, earnings reports, and government documents.

According to Barron’s, the construction of these phrases is not just a way to communicate with companies – it is an epidemic, more than four times from about 50 mentions in 2023, to more than 200 uses in 2025.

That’s not all it tells us – I’ve also found examples from last year:

• “In 2025, AI will not be just a tool; it will be an assistant.” (Cisco)
• The future of independence is not imminent, it is already underway. (Accenture)
• “DevOps teams are not only managing deployments, but also security and cloud adoption.” (Work day)
• “These machines aren’t just working, they’re learning, adapting, and interacting.” (McKinsey)
• “When Bill founded Microsoft, he didn’t think of a software company, but a software factory, not constrained by any product or group.” (Satya Nadella in a Microsoft blog post.)
• “It’s not just making tools for work or other tasks, but it’s making tools that help everyone build their own tools. (Also Microsoft blog post.)
• “Imagine if all 8 billion people could call on a researcher…not just to know more but to use their skills to do something that would benefit them.” (However, same Microsoft blog post.)

It’s no coincidence that AI tools use this term a lot – and show our articles, which these tools were trained (without our permission, I might add, which not only insults the authors – it’s a violation). And they’re not just making up these sentences – it’s also the em-dashes that are now considered AI-generated words.

This isn’t just a joke – it’s representative of how dependent the industry is on AI (although we can’t say for sure if the above errors were AI-assisted). So the next time you see a sentence like that, remember that it’s not just construction – it could be a sign of something bigger.

“The amount of content in AI is increasing and ‘it’s not just X, it’s Y’ is the preferred language of 2025,” said Max Spero, CEO of the AI ​​cognitive tool. Pangramhe told TechCrunch. “The frequency of these reactions is so high that there is no smoking gun for the use of AI, but it is clear that publications and corporate documents, written guided by necessity and not emotion, are seeing an increase in the use of AI.”

Updated, 4/20/26, 6:00 PM EST, with a quote from Pangram.