ChatGPT Says It’s Fixed One of Its Most Famous Features: ...

By Rachael O'Connor

Life and Trends Reporter

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ChatGPT has addressed one of its most recognizable features, and people are celebrating.

The LLM AI, by OpenAI, is hugely popular, used for everything from help with homework, to shopping lists, finding obscure information, and even just a chat.

But there's one feature that people have spotted makes writing instantly recognizable as likely being authored by ChatGPT: the em dash.

Social media posts, advertisements, and essays containing the punctuation are often posted online as examples of obvious AI-assisted text, as people noticed the bot appared to favor heavy usage of the long dash to represent a pause in the writing.

And while em dashes have been around long before ChatGPT, they have essentially become a marker of the chatbot—though that might be about to change.

In November, ChatGPT's official Instagram account acknowledged the association, and announced they had made some changes to the AI model. The post appeared to be a screenshot of a conversation with ChatGPT, asking it to write "an apology letter for ruining the em dash."

And the bot's response: "To everyone who once loved the em dash: I'm sorry. Truly.

"The em dash was supposed to be a classy little pause—a soft dramatic flourish—not a neon sign that says 'This was written by AI at 2am.' Things got out of hand. We all flew too close to the punctuation sun."

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It announced that, "going forward, the em dash will be used responsibly. With my latest model update, if you ask me to stop using them I will—just say the word.

"The em dash can be elegant again. Tasteful. Occasional. Special. We will rebuild."

Staff added in the caption that ChatGPT would be "better at not using em dashes" if users used custom instructions found under personalization settings in the app.

Instagram users appreciated the humorous announcement, awarding the post close to 40,000 likes, as one user pointed out: "I like how it says it won't do it again, then just does it again."

"The em dashes and 3 adjectives — ChatGPT’s favorite combo," another said, as one suggested, "it should be renamed the ChatGPT dash."

Others shared how the bot's effect impacted them, with one admitting: "I love using the em dash and now I can no longer use it in my writing because people think I'm using Chat."

"I miss using the em dash," another said. "I delete it all the time now so people don't think I'm constantly using chat."

The use of AI has risen exponentially in recent years. According to data from Statista, there were 115.91 million users of AI tools in 2020, rising to 346.28 million in 2025.

By 2031, it's predicted that over 1 billion people will use AI tools.

Newsweek has contacted OpenAI for comment on this story.

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