The 'Not Just — It's' Epidemic: How an AI Writing Tell Became Corporate America's Default

Sometimes, things are not just one thing — they're also another thing. This sentence construction ("It's not just this — it's that") has become so common in AI-generated writing that now, it's no longer just a clue that a piece of writing may be synthetic — it's almost a guarantee. That's why, I was not just intrigued when I saw a Barron's report about how this sentence construction has dramatically increased in corporate communications — I was deeply amused. The report didn't just remark on the prevalence of this phrasing in corporate communications — it scanned the market intelligence firm AlphaSense's database to find how often this phrasing was used in corporate news releases, earnings reports, and government filings. According to Barron's, this sentence construction isn't just a quirk of corporate communications — it's an epidemic, more than quadrupling from about 50 mentions in 2023, to over 200 uses in 2025. It's not just the data that tells us this — I also found some examples from the past year: "In 2025, AI won't just be a tool; it will be a collaborator." (Cisco) "The future of autonomy isn't just on the horizon; it's already unfolding." (Accenture) "DevOps teams are managing not just deployments, but also security compliance and cloud spending." (Workday) "These systems aren't just executing tasks; they're starting to learn, adapt, and collaborate." (McKinsey) "When Bill founded Microsoft, he envisioned not just a software company, but a software factory, unconstrained by any single product or category." (Satya Nadella in a Microsoft blog post) "It's not just about building tools for specific roles or tasks. It's about building tools that empower everyone to create their own tools." (The same Microsoft blog post.) "Just imagine if all 8 billion people could summon a researcher … not just to get information but use their expertise to get things done that benefit them." (Still, that same Microsoft blog post.) It's not coincidental that generative AI tools use this phrase a lot — it's a reflection of our writing, which these tools were trained on (without our permission, might I add, which is not just insulting to writers — it's a violation). And it's not just this sentence construction — it's also em-dashes that are now considered a tell for AI-generated text. This isn't just a funny trend — it's symbolic of how reliant these companies have become on AI (though we cannot say for certain if the above missives were AI-assisted). So next time you see a sentence like that, remember that it's not just a catchy construction — it might be a symptom of something greater.