Generic tells are the phrases and shapes that mark writing as unedited AI output: the same three openers, headings phrased as questions, a rash of em dashes, tidy emoji bullet lists. None is wrong alone. Together they are why so much AI text reads as nobody's.
Why it matters
AI writing has a house style, and readers have learned to spot it. The moment a post reads like the default model, it also reads as low-effort, and the brand behind it looks like it did not bother.
The tells are structural, not just word choice: how pieces open, how headings are phrased, how lists are formatted, how often the same sentence shape repeats. A human editor fixes these without thinking; unedited output leaves them all in.
Catching them is a cleanliness check, not a taste judgment. It says this reads as machine-made, here is where, before it ships under your name.
How Jinn treats it
Jinn runs a deterministic scan against a fixed catalog of the shapes that give AI text away and scores a draft for cleanliness, where higher means cleaner. It masks quoted and code passages first, so a legitimate quote is never flagged.
It fails safe: an empty or mostly-quoted draft comes back as unavailable, never as a false clean pass. On top of the generic catalog, Ghost also learns the phrases a specific voice has actually struck out, so the tells it flags become yours over time, evidenced by your own edits.
Related terms
The tells that make writing read as nobody's.
Machine-made is a shape you can catch before it ships. See how Ghost keeps writing sounding like you.