WSJ: AI Speech Patterns Are Bleeding Into Real-World Meetings

The Wall Street Journal reports that heavy exposure to AI-generated content is changing how people actually talk. "Humans are ingesting so much AI content that prompt language, fawning feedback and 'caveman speak' are officially bleeding into real-world meetings," the Journal wrote. The piece describes workers unconsciously adopting the terse, article-dropping style of "caveman" prompts alongside the effusive, sycophantic tone of AI assistants. The trend has a real economic driver. The "caveman" plugin trend, created by developer Julius Brussee, instructs models to drop articles and pleasantries entirely, cutting output tokens by roughly 65 to 75 percent. Companies from Microsoft to Uber have pulled back on AI usage as token-based billing balloons, with one workplace reportedly burning through $500 million in a single month of Claude usage, according to 404 Media.