AI clichés
Silktide measures how often each page uses phrases strongly associated with unedited AI writing, such as "delve into" or "in today's fast-paced world". Pages where these phrases are unusually concentrated are flagged so you can review and rewrite them.
No single phrase is a problem on its own - all of them appear in ordinary human writing. The signal is concentration: page after page of "ever-evolving landscapes", "rich tapestries", and "pivotal roles" reads as machine-generated whether it was or not.
Why this matters
Readers have learned to recognise AI-flavoured copy, and they discount it. Content that sounds generated erodes trust in your expertise, makes your organisation sound like every other organisation, and gives visitors a reason to stop reading. Search engines and AI assistants are also increasingly oriented towards distinctive, original content, so generic phrasing costs you visibility as well as credibility.
How to fix it
- Open the flagged page and review which phrases were found - the finding lists the most frequent ones.
- Rewrite in your own voice. The goal is not to swap each cliché for a synonym but to say something specific: replace "unlock the potential of our cutting-edge solutions" with what the product actually does.
- If you use AI to draft content, treat the draft as raw material - edit it into your organisation's voice before publishing.
- If you are confident a flagged page is right as written, you can the finding.
How Silktide tests this
- Extract the text people actually see on each page.
- Skip pages with fewer than 200 words, where the measurement is not meaningful.
- Count how often the page matches a curated list of phrases and words that are heavily overrepresented in AI-generated writing. Matching ignores case.
- Flag the page when it has at least 3 matches and their density reaches 5 or more per 1000 words.
- Record the density for every measured page, so you can watch the trend over time even on pages that never get flagged.
Troubleshooting
A person wrote this page
That happens - every phrase on the list occurs in human writing, and some writers genuinely favour them. The thresholds are deliberately conservative, so a page only flags when the concentration is high enough that it reads as generated to visitors regardless of who wrote it. Rewriting usually improves the page either way; if you disagree, approve the finding.
The page is about AI
Writing about AI does not trigger the check - the list contains stylistic clichés, not topical vocabulary, and the density threshold means mentioning a few of them in passing is not enough to flag.