Language in Egypt has regularly evolved with technology, and now, artificial intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, are shaping written and spoken language in Egypt and worldwide. The sweeping linguistic shift appears in academic and professional writing, and in digital spaces too. Egyptians, to this day, say “LOL,” laughing out loud, casually in everyday speech, and write it in the Arabic language on social media —a returning ghost from a past when instant messaging dominated online communication in the late 1990s and early 2000s and changed how people text and talk. People were using MSN Messenger worldwide, with shorthand words like LOL (laugh out loud), LMAO (laughing my a** off), and BRB (be right back) working their way from chat windows into everyday speech, including the digital culture in Egypt, too. Similarly, Instagram and Twitter, currently named X, brought their own vocabulary shift and introduced the new word “hashtag,” whereas people say “hashtag” mid-phrase casually in spoken English. Now, AI is repeating that pattern, but the scale and speed of the shift are unprecedented. A 2025 report from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development found…
