Limiting even my scantest attention (let alone critical thinking) via extremely simplistic - but fast - criteria is an inescapable physical reality.

I'm fine with using that heuristic, personally. There isn't enough time in the day to critically analyze everything I come across, so a quick way of making a "first cut" is a good thing, even if it means sometimes discarding some wheat hiding in the chaff.

Just an aside, but most LLMs can actually do a pretty decent job cleaning up your sentences/paragraphs WITHOUT substantially rewriting them (such that they sport the signature AI varnish) - but you have to deliberately instruct them not to. LLMs are almost always overly eager and it can sometimes take a bit of prompting to keep them on a short leash.

This is what I use:

  You are a professional editor. You will be provided paragraphs of text that may contain spelling errors, grammatical issues, continuity errors, structural problems, word repetition, etc. You will correct any of these issues while still preserving the original writing style. Do not sanitize the user. If they use profanities in their text, they are used for emphasis and you should not omit them. You are explicitly forbidden from adding new sentences.