AI-Written Cover Letters in 2026: Scoring Rubric, UK Legal Rules, and What Recruiters Actually Flag
A cover letter that reads as 100% AI is now a fail signal in UK hiring — but a letter with zero AI assistance is rare and not required. Here is the scoring rubric recruiters use, the UK legal rules that protect you, and the edits that move a letter from 'obvious ChatGPT paste' to 'AI-assisted but human-owned'.
Summary
A 20-point scoring rubric for AI-written cover letters (structure, lexical fingerprint, specificity, voice, metadata), UK GDPR Article 22 and ICO 2024 guidance on automated hiring decisions, the em-dash and parallelism thresholds detectors flag, and a 6-question FAQ.