"Oh, Did ChatGPT Write That?" - The thing no one told me about AI rollout was that the biggest problem wouldn't be the technology.

This is a composite scenario based on patterns I'm seeing across teams navigating AI rollout. The names are fictional. The dynamics are not.

It started as a joke.

We'd just been given access, the whole team. Enterprise licences, a one-hour training session, a Slack message from the CTO that said something like "explore, experiment, integrate where useful."

And then nothing.

No guidelines. No follow-up. No "here's what good looks like." Just... go.

So people went.

Within a couple of weeks, I noticed the shift. Not in output - in atmosphere.

Tom submitted a client proposal that was unusually polished. Well-structured. Clear in a way his work hadn't been before. Nobody said anything in the meeting. But afterwards, in the kitchen, I heard Priya say it.

"Bet ChatGPT wrote that."

People laughed. Tom laughed too.

I didn't think much of it.

Then it happened again. Jess sent a project update that was sharp, concise, well-framed, confident. She'd been with us three months. A junior. The kind of update a senior would send.

Dan read it out loud in the standup. Not to praise it. To perform suspicion.

"Very impressive, Jess. Or should I say, very impressive, Claude?"

More laughter. Jess smiled. But I saw her shoulders change.

She didn't send another update like that.

It became a thing. A running joke. A way of testing each other without actually asking.

If something was too good: "AI wrote that." If something was too fast: "AI wrote that." If someone suddenly punched above their weight: "AI wrote that."

It sounded like banter. It felt like surveillance.

And here's the thing I didn't understand at the time. The joke wasn't about AI.

It was about permission.

Every time someone laughed at a colleague's output and said "did ChatGPT write that?" they were really saying: using AI too well makes you suspicious.

Which meant the unspoken rule became: use it, but don't let it show.

So people hid it.

Tom went back to his usual standard. Jess kept her updates vague. A few people used it at home on personal accounts where no one could see. One person told me privately she felt like she was "cheating" and had stopped using it entirely.

Meanwhile, Dan - the loudest mocker - was using it more than anyone. I found that out three months later when he left and his handover was a mess. He'd been prompting everything. Strategy docs, client emails, even his one-to-ones prep. Without the model, there was almost nothing underneath.

I didn't see it at the time. I thought the jokes were harmless. Team culture. A bit of friction while people adjusted.

But looking back, here's what was actually happening.

The mockery created a shame layer around competence. People who were using AI well went quiet. People who were using it badly went loud. And the people who weren't using it at all felt righteous about avoiding something they were actually just scared of.

I was managing a team of fifteen people through a technology shift that was quietly rearranging status, confidence, and authorship and I had no framework for it.

Nobody told me that AI rollout would change how people felt about each other.

Nobody told me that "did ChatGPT write that?" wasn't a joke. It was a status negotiation.

Nobody told me that the silence after the training session was where the real problems would grow.

If I could go back, I wouldn't have changed the tools. I would have changed the conversation.

I would have said, out loud, in a meeting:

"Using AI well is a skill. Avoiding it doesn't make you purer. Overusing it doesn't make you smarter. And mocking someone for producing good work, regardless of how they produced it, is not something we do here."

One sentence. That's all it would have taken to change the entire culture.

But I didn't know that then.

I didn't know that AI rollout isn't a technology event. It's an identity event. It shifts who feels competent, who feels threatened, who feels seen, and who goes underground.

And if no one names that out loud, it plays out in jokes, in silence, and in the slow erosion of trust that nobody notices until it's already gone.

The mockery was never about AI.

It was about a team trying to figure out who they were now — without anyone helping them do it.

Gail Weiner works with managers navigating the human impact of AI rollout — the identity shifts, status disruption, and unspoken tension that no training session covers. If this story sounds familiar, [get in touch - info@gailweiner.com].