Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents now interact with billions of humans in natural language, thanks to advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. This raises the question of whether AI has the potential to shape a fundamental aspect of human culture: the way we speak. Recent analyses revealed that scientific publications already exhibit evidence of AI-specific language. But this evidence is inconclusive, since scientists may simply be using AI to copy-edit their writing. To explore whether AI has influenced human spoken communication, we transcribed and analyzed about 280,000 English-language videos of presentations, talks, and speeches from more than 20,000 YouTube channels of academic institutions. We find a significant shift in the trend of word usage specific to words distinctively associated with ChatGPT following its release. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that humans increasingly imitate LLMs in their spoken language. Our results raise societal and policy-relevant concerns about the potential of AI to unintentionally reduce linguistic diversity, or to be deliberately misused for mass manipulation. They also highlight the need for further investigation into the feedback loops between machine behavior and human culture.

本研究解决了大型语言模型（LLMs）对人类口头交流的潜在影响这一问题。通过分析来自2万多个YouTube频道的28万条英文视频，发现自ChatGPT发布以来，使用与其相关的特定词汇的趋势显著变化，表明人类交流中逐渐模仿LLMs。这一发现引发了对人工智能可能减少语言多样性或被误用进行大规模操控的社会及政策相关关注。 

大型语言模型对人类口头交流影响的实证证据