This commentary examines the growing normalisation of AI-polished academic English in South-North scholarly publishing. While generative AI may help multilingual scholars manage linguistic barriers, its uncritical use risks producing a standardised academic style that erases situated voice, local idiom, intellectual hesitation and interpretive risk. The problem, therefore, is not simply whether AI has been used, but how its use reshapes authorship, legitimacy and scholarly presence. Building on the recent Critical Arts manifesto “Being Sceptical,” the commentary argues that the journal's concern with artificial intelligence and intellectual integrity should be extended from book reviewing to the wider politics of academic style. In journals committed to cultural studies, media studies and postcolonial critique, academic style is never neutral: it carries histories of access, authority, citation and exclusion. The commentary argues that AI detection alone cannot protect intellectual integrity. Instead, journals need a situated ethics of scholarly voice: one that distinguishes language assistance from intellectual substitution, requires transparent disclosure, protects multilingual expression, and evaluates manuscripts through evidence, argument, citation accuracy and interpretive labour. The future of academic English should not be machine-made sameness, but a more capacious language able to carry difference, locality and critical thought.