OpenAI Says It Has Fixed the Em Dash Problem With Chatgpt

OpenAI has announced that it has rolled out a fix for one of the most persistent and peculiar quirks of its flagship AI model, ChatGPT: its obsessive overuse of the em dash.

For months, avid users and AI observers have noted the chatbot’s tendency to litter its responses with em dashes—the long dash used to connect or set apart clauses—often using them multiple times in a single paragraph. This stylistic tic became a tell-tale sign of an AI-generated response, with the model frequently using the punctuation mark for dramatic pauses or to string together related thoughts.

The "em dash problem" became a widely discussed topic on social media platforms and developer forums, with users complaining that the punctuation was used unnaturally and excessively, making the AI's writing style feel stilted and repetitive.

In a recent update, OpenAI confirmed it had addressed the issue. A developer from the company, responding to user feedback, stated that a new version of the model has been trained to reduce its reliance on this specific punctuation.

The fix is believed to be a "soft" one, meaning it's not a hard-coded rule (like "never use an em dash") but rather a change in the model's training data and reinforcement learning process. This nudges the AI to use em dashes more sparingly and appropriately, aligning its writing style more closely with natural human prose.

Early user reports suggest the fix has been largely successful, with ChatGPT's responses now appearing cleaner and employing a more varied use of punctuation, such as commas and shorter sentences, where an em dash might have previously been forced.