OpenAI says the ChatGPT dash issue has been fixed

OpenAI says that ChatGPT will now get rid of dashes if you ask it to. The obvious sign that supposedly indicates AI-written text has been popping up everywhere in recent months, including school papers, emails, comments, customer service conversations, LinkedIn posts, online forums, ad copy, and more. The inclusion of em Dash led to people criticizing these writers for being lazy and resorting to an AI-powered chatbot to do their work.

Of course, many have also argued in favor of the em dash, saying that it was part of their writing long before MBAs adopted punctuation. However, the fact that chatbots have not been able to avoid their use has made the so-called “ChatGPT hyphen” a newly objectionable addition to any text, even if it is not a reliable signal of content generated by generative AI.

The issue has bedeviled OpenAI for some time, as ChatGPT users were unable to convince the chatbot to stop using the code, even when they specifically asked it not to.

Now, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says the company has fixed the problem. In a post on the

The company explains in a post on Threads (where it forced ChatGPT to apologize for “ruining the em dash”) that ChatGPT will be better at not using the em dash if you tell it not to do so via custom instructions in your customization settings. This means that it won’t necessarily remove the em dash from its output by default, but you’ll at least have more control over how often it appears.