Off the Leash: The AI Backlash — When Original Work Looks Too Good to Be Believed

The Hook

It finally happened. I sent a recruiter a piece of work I’d poured myself into — polished, detailed, and precise, only to hear, “I don’t think I should forward this… it reads like it was created by AI.”

The irony? It wasn’t. It was just good.

The Shift

A strange thing is happening in professional circles. For years, hiring managers complained about sloppy writing, unfocused reports, and vague thinking. Now, when something shows structure, clarity, and polish, it raises suspicion instead of confidence.

We’ve crossed a new threshold, not of AI replacing humans, but of humans being mistaken for AI when they do their best work.

The Backlash

The explosion of AI tools has created a new kind of bias, one that punishes professionalism.

Recruiters and managers are starting to assume that well-formatted, articulate, or technically precise work must have been generated by a machine. It’s the inverse of the old problem: where mediocrity was ignored, excellence is now suspect.

This is more than an annoyance. It’s a credibility crisis. Because if quality itself is viewed with skepticism, how do authentic professionals prove their worth?

The Real Issue

The question isn’t whether AI was used, it’s whether judgment was applied.

AI can draft, summarize, and format, but it can’t yet understand nuance, weigh context, or show accountability. The best professionals use tools wisely — but they still think.

When we conflate “AI-assisted” with “AI-authored,” we stop evaluating the one thing that really matters: discernment.

The New Burden of Proof

Those of us who write, design, or analyze for a living now have to prove humanity. We annotate, explain, and over-document, not to educate the reader, but to convince them that we actually did the work.

That’s backwards.

Instead of teaching professionals to sound less polished, we should be teaching evaluators to look for depth, to ask why a decision was made, not who typed it.

The Reclaim

We need to re-normalize excellence. If someone produces something sharp, clear, and well-structured, assume skill, not software, until proven otherwise.

AI isn’t the enemy of good work. Distrust is.

And if the future of hiring requires proof of humanity, maybe the real test won’t be whether we used AI, but whether we still cared enough to get it right.

Closing CTA

We’ve spent decades asking people to write better, think clearly, and communicate like professionals. Let’s not punish them now that they finally can.

#OffTheLeash #AIEthics #Leadership #Recruiting #Trust #WorkCulture