/serious Well, yes, most APIs are meant for system-to-system interaction, that's kind of a given. But since this particular API is clearly meant for human-to-system interaction, returning a human-readable response is adequate. Yes, a better design would probably allow the client to specify additional parameters about the desired response.
/back-to-jokes Yeah, well this kind of sums up most of my job applications. I send an application and the recruiting people are all like "OK".