What a rather ironic headline that generalizes across all "AI use", while the story is about a study that is specifically about "essay writing tasks". But that kind of slop is just par for the course for journalists and also always has been.

But it does highlight that this mind-slop decline is not new in any way even if it may have accelerated with the decline and erosion of standards.

Think of it what you want, but if the standards that led to a state everyone really enjoys and benefits from are done away with, inevitably that enjoyable state everyone benefited from and you really like will start crumbling all around you.

AI is not really unusual in this manner, other than maybe that it is squarely hitting a group and population like public health policy journalists and programmers that previously thought they were immune because they were engaged in writing. Yes, programmers are essentially just writers.