The Answering Machine Effect
Why you already know what you’re about to read isn’t real and what to do about it.
Imagine a small red badge on every article, every design, every conversation: AI-Generated Content.
Before you read a single word, you feel it: a tiny click of disengagement, an instinctive pullback. You wouldn’t press “Accept cookies” without thinking, but you’d skip the AI label without even deciding.
Most people already know what they’d do. Close the tab. That reaction isn’t new. Let me take you back to the first phones.