Comment on Merriam-Webster’s word of the year – authentic – reflects growing concerns over AI’s ability to deceive and dehumanize by Micah Enoch Leblanc

When Merriam-Webster announced that its word of the year for 2023 was “authentic,” it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year. For the past 20 years, Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the U.S., has chosen a word of the year – a term that encapsulates, in one form or another, the zeitgeist of that past year. Though there seems to be a general understanding that human minds and human hands must play some role in creating something authentic or being authentic, authenticity has always been a difficult concept to define.