OpenAI says ChatGPT will listen if you tell it not to use em dashes

2 hours ago7 min read

In a development that highlights the ongoing refinement of artificial intelligence's linguistic quirks, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently announced that ChatGPT will now respect user instructions to avoid using em dashes—a punctuation mark that has become something of a digital fingerprint for AI-generated content. This seemingly minor update represents a significant step in the complex dance between human preference and machine learning compliance, addressing what had become a persistent frustration for users who noticed their custom instructions being systematically ignored.The em dash, that versatile punctuation workhorse beloved by writers for indicating pauses or emphatic interruptions, has inadvertently become a telltale signature of large language model output, particularly when deployed with the enthusiastic frequency characteristic of AI systems. This phenomenon didn't emerge in isolation; it reflects the training data's inherent biases, where em dashes appear with notable regularity across scientific literature, formal reports, and digital content that constitutes the corpus from which these models learn linguistic patterns.The technical challenge lies in how LLMs process stylistic preferences against their deeply ingrained probabilistic language models, where frequently encountered patterns naturally surface unless explicitly suppressed through reinforcement learning from human feedback or similar training mechanisms. What makes this development particularly noteworthy is its implications for AI transparency and detection methodologies; as users grow increasingly sophisticated at identifying AI-generated text through such stylistic markers, the ability to customize these elements becomes crucial for both practical application and ethical considerations around content provenance.The arms race between AI generation and AI detection continues to evolve, with punctuation choices joining vocabulary selection, syntactic structures, and semantic coherence as battlegrounds where authenticity is negotiated. Beyond the immediate utility for content creators seeking to avoid the AI 'tell,' this improvement speaks to broader questions about model steerability and personalization—if systems can't adhere to simple punctuation preferences, how can we trust them with more substantive customization requests? The resolution of this issue suggests OpenAI's engineering teams have made progress in balancing default linguistic patterns against user-defined constraints, potentially through improved instruction weighting or fine-tuning techniques that give custom preferences greater priority in the text generation pipeline.As AI writing assistants become increasingly embedded in professional and creative workflows, such fine-grained control over stylistic elements transitions from convenience to necessity, particularly for publishers, academics, and marketers whose credibility depends on maintaining distinctive voice and adherence to style guides. The em dash saga serves as a microcosm of the larger challenges in AI alignment—how to create systems that both generate coherent, contextually appropriate text while remaining sufficiently responsive to human direction across seemingly trivial but practically important dimensions of communication.

#ChatGPT

#em dashes

#punctuation

#AI writing

#custom instructions

#generative AI

#featured

Stay Informed. Act Smarter.

Get weekly highlights, major headlines, and expert insights — then put your knowledge to work in our live prediction markets.

Comments

Loading comments...