Authenticity Tax on AI Communication

Widespread use of generative AI imposes an 'authenticity tax' — a social cost where every message must be discounted for machine authorship, lowering baseline trust in workplaces and communities and incentivizing reciprocal outsourcing to AI. This creates a coordination problem: as more actors rely on AI for mundane expression, the social value of genuine, effortful communication falls and institutions become more clinical and less cohesive. — If true, the idea implies policy and organizational responses (disclosure norms, provenance standards, or cultural incentives) are needed to preserve trust in civic and institutional talk.