3126: Disclaimer

2025-08-11T21:04:13Z

Octave Octet:

{{comic
| number = 3126
| date = August 8, 2025
| title = Disclaimer
| image = disclaimer_2x.png
| imagesize = 346x396px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = You say no human would reply to a forum thread about Tom Bombadil by writing and editing hundreds of words of text, complete with formatting, fancy punctuation, and two separate uses of the word 'delve'. Unfortunately for both of us, you are wrong.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|If the academic integrity department asks, this page was NOT created by ChatGPT. Don’t remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic shows a message written by [[Cueball]] (likely representing [[Randall]]). The combination of a user profile image, metadata, and the body of text (not to mention the reference to a forum in the title text), suggest this is a posting on a forum. At the end — possibly as an automatically appended forum signature — he includes a disclaimer pre-emptively denying that the content was produced by ChatGPT, and that this is just the way he is.

{{w|ChatGPT}} is a {{w|large language model}}, a type of {{w|generative artificial intelligence}} designed to produce human-like text. In 2025, at the time of this comic’s release, tools like ChatGPT had become widely used for composing everything from professional emails to casual forum posts.{{Citation needed}} Chatbots tend to be verbose. One side effect of this trend is that genuine, naturally long-form writing is sometimes mistaken for AI-generated content. People may become suspicious not only of length and thoroughness, but also of stylistic markers such as formally correct punctuation — particularly the {{w|Dash#Em_dash|em dash}} — which is uncommon among average internet users, but occasionally favored by ChatGPT.

The title text explains the context. It notes that some people claim no human would compose a meticulously organized essay about {{w|Tom Bombadil}}, a relatively minor character from ''The Lord of the Rings'', especially if it contains the word “delve.” This word is perceived as atypical in everyday conversation, yet is [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/16/techscape-ai-gadgest-humane-ai-pin-chatgpt |frequently used by ChatGPT]. Randall implies that he would write such an essay, and in fact has. The choice of “delve” may also be a deliberate reference to Gandalf’s line in ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' about the Dwarves who “delved too greedily and too deep,” or perhaps to “Michel Delving,” the largest Hobbit settlement in the Shire, whose name literally means “large excavation.” He also says this is unfortunate for both of them: the person he's talking to for having jumped to the wrong assumption about the nature of the author, and Randall for having wasted so much of his time writing about a minor topic.

The presence of the em dash in the disclaimer further fuels the joke. Em dashes are seen by many as an indicator that a piece of text was AI-generated; although they have been a long-standing (even pre-GPT) feature of both Randall's comics and this site's user-written explanations, which of course does not disprove the more general observation being alluded to. The comic is also likely to be have been written specifically as a response to the release of {{w|GPT-5}}, the day before this comic was published.

==Transcript==
:[A Cueball profile picture is shown next to five paragraphs of illegible text, which contains varied punctuation marks and two square-bracketed citations. The last paragraph in the essay is separated from the other paragraphs by a line with three dashes. Its single sentence is highlighted, and lines connect that illegible sentence to a box with an enlarged, legible version of the sentence.]
:Enlarged text: Not ChatGPT output—I’m just like this.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I've had to start adding this disclaimer to my messages.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]
[[Category:LOTR]]

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3126: Disclaimer