ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A CATALYST OF LINGUISTIC INNOVATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article investigates the role of artificial intelligence as a catalyst of linguistic innovation in Twitter/X discourse, with a particular focus on the phenomenon of AI verbalization – the process by which AI systems themselves become sources of new words, nominations and communicative formulas actively adopted by platform users. Special attention is given to Grok, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk's xAI company and integrated directly into the Twitter/X interface, which represents a unique case of a platform-level AI tool with immediate and measurable linguistic impact. The methodological framework combines conceptual analysis, semantic analysis of onomastic material, and discourse analysis. The study demonstrates that AI verbalization operates through four interconnected mechanisms: onomastic borrowing; the emergence of new communicative formulas; semantic shifts of technical terms (hallucinate, slop) into everyday evaluative register; and the formation of a new semantic opposition human – AI as a user response to the proliferation of automated content. The findings confirm that AI systems do not merely process language but actively shape it, functioning as full-fledged agents of linguistic change in digital discourse.