--- title: "The machine is in the room. In a lot of rooms." url: https://deadwritingtheory.com/cases/a-quarter-of-the-press-release/ summary: "By late 2024, roughly 24% of corporate press releases involved LLM-assisted writing. The study measures adoption, not sameness, but the machine is in a lot of rooms." published: 2026-10-04 updated: 2026-10-04 author: "Jack Stovell" publisher: "Adapt Progress Evolve Limited" language: en-GB --- # The machine is in the room. In a lot of rooms. By late 2024, roughly 24% of corporate press releases involved LLM-assisted writing. The study measures adoption, not sameness, but the machine is in a lot of rooms. **Case No. DWT-003: A quarter of the press release.** Verdict for the prosecution. Filed 4 October 2026. - **The question:** How much of what society writes, from consumer complaints to corporate press releases, job postings and UN press releases, involves LLM-assisted writing, and how has that changed since ChatGPT? - **The sample:** 687,241 consumer complaints, 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings and 15,919 UN press releases, January 2022 to September 2024 - **The study:** Weixin Liang, Yaohui Zhang, Mihai Codreanu, Jiayu Wang, Hancheng Cao, James Zou (Stanford University), "The widespread adoption of large language model-assisted writing across society", Patterns 6(12), 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2025.101366 - **Whose study:** Third-party study. Not our study. Entered into evidence from Weixin Liang, Yaohui Zhang, Mihai Codreanu, Jiayu Wang, Hancheng Cao, James Zou, Stanford University. - **Peer review:** Peer reviewed ## Findings of fact 1. By late 2024, roughly 18% of financial consumer complaints, 24% of corporate press releases, nearly 10% of job postings in small firms and 14% of UN press releases involved LLM-assisted writing. 2. Newswire press releases peaked at 24.3% in December 2023 and stabilised at 23.8% through September 2024. 3. PRNewswire peaked at 16.4% (December 2023) and held at 16.5% through September 2024. 4. Before ChatGPT's release (November 2022), the method's false positive rate on consumer complaints was 1.5%. 5. Growth appears to have stabilised by 2024: the authors say this reflects either saturation in LLM adoption or more advanced models being harder to detect. ## Caveats for the jury - It measures adoption (a shift in word distributions), not whether writing became more alike. - The estimates are for whole corpora, not for any single press release or complaint. - The authors allow that the plateau may be more advanced models becoming harder to spot, rather than real saturation. - The data stops in September 2024. ## The court reporter's account Right, first witness. A team at Stanford (Liang, Zhang, Codreanu, Wang, Cao and Zou) published a paper in Patterns in 2025, peer reviewed, called "The widespread adoption of large language model-assisted writing across society". Mouthful. The finding is simpler than the title. Here's the method, and it matters. They didn't run an AI detector over each document and count the guilty ones. They built a population-level statistical model of word distributions, then asked how much of the whole pile looks like it involved an LLM. The pile was big: 687,241 consumer complaints, 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings and 15,919 UN press releases, running from January 2022 to September 2024. So what did they find? By late 2024, roughly 18% of financial consumer complaints involved LLM-assisted writing. For corporate press releases it was 24%. Nearly 10% of job postings in small firms, and 14% of UN press releases. Newswire press releases peaked at 24.3% in December 2023 and stabilised at 23.8% through September 2024. If you write press releases for a living, that's roughly a quarter of the copy landing on the wire next to yours. Growth appears to have levelled off by 2024. The authors say that might be saturation, or it might be that more advanced models are simply harder to spot. They don't claim to know which, and I like them for it. Now the caveat, and it's a big one. This study measures adoption. It does not measure whether the writing became more alike. Lots of people using a tool is one thing; lots of text sounding identical is another, and the data stops in September 2024 anyway. So the court can't convict on sameness here. But as evidence that the machine is in the room, and in a lot of rooms, it's hard to argue with. Verdict: for the prosecution. ## The exhibits entered in this case ### For the prosecution - **Exhibit P-5**: About a quarter of corporate press releases involved LLM-assisted writing. **24%** of corporate press releases, late 2024. 537,413 corporate press releases, January 2022 to September 2024. A population-level estimate from word distributions, not a per-document detector. - **Exhibit P-6**: Financial consumer complaints took on the machine's words too. **18%** of financial consumer complaints, late 2024. Roughly 18% of 687,241 consumer complaints. Also nearly 10% of job postings in small firms and 14% of UN press releases. ### For the defence - No exhibit entered for the defence in this case. ## The finding By late 2024, roughly 24% of corporate press releases involved LLM-assisted writing. The study measures adoption, not sameness, but the machine is in a lot of rooms. ## Sources - [Liang et al., "The widespread adoption of large language model-assisted writing across society", Patterns 6(12), 2025 (the original study)](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2025.101366) - [Liang et al., the same paper on PubMed Central (open access)](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12745980/) - [Liang et al., the preprint on arXiv (arXiv:2502.09747)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09747) ## Questions people ask ### How much corporate writing involves AI? By late 2024, roughly 24% of corporate press releases involved LLM-assisted writing, according to Liang et al. (Stanford, Patterns 2025). The figure was roughly 18% for financial consumer complaints, nearly 10% for job postings in small firms and 14% for UN press releases. ### Did it keep rising? No. Newswire press releases peaked at 24.3% in December 2023 and stabilised at 23.8% through September 2024. The authors say growth appears to have stabilised by 2024, through saturation or because more advanced models are harder to detect. ### Does this prove writing is becoming the same? No. The study measures how much text is LLM-assisted, not whether it became more alike. It is evidence that the machine is widely used, which is why it is entered for the prosecution, but it cannot convict on sameness. ### How was it measured? With a population-level statistical model of word distributions, not a per-document AI detector, over 687,241 consumer complaints, 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings and 15,919 UN press releases from January 2022 to September 2024. It is a third-party study, not ours.