The "it's not X, it's Y" construction seems pretty neutral to me. Almost no one minds when the phrase "it's not a bug, it's a feature" is used idiomatically, for example.

The main thing that's annoying about typical AI writing style is its repetitiveness and fixation on certain tropes. It's like if you went to a comedy club and noticed a handful of jokes that each comedian used multiple times per set. You might get tired of those jokes quickly, but the jokes themselves could still be fine.

Related: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-...