OpenAI says it’s fixed ChatGPT’s em dash problem

In Brief

OpenAI says ChatGPT volition present ditch the em dashes if you archer it to. The telltale motion that supposedly signals substance written by AI has popped up everywhere successful caller months, including successful schoolhouse papers, emails, comments, lawsuit work chats, LinkedIn posts, online forums, advertisement copy, and more. The inclusion of the em dash has led radical to knock those writers for being lazy and turning to an AI chatbot to bash their work.

Of course, galore person besides argued for the em dash, saying it’s been a portion of their penning good earlier LLMs adopted the punctuation. However, the information that chatbots couldn’t look to debar its usage made the alleged “ChatGPT hyphen” a recently objectionable summation to immoderate text, adjacent if they weren’t a reliable awesome of contented created by generative AI.

The problem had stumped OpenAI for immoderate time, arsenic ChatGPT users were incapable to get the chatbot to halt utilizing the symbol, adjacent erstwhile they specifically asked it not to.

Now, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the institution has fixed the problem. In a station connected X, Altman writes, “If you archer ChatGPT not to usage em-dashes successful your customized instructions, it yet does what it’s expected to do,” calling the update a “small-but-happy win.”

The company explains successful a station connected Threads (where it forced ChatGPT to apologize for “ruining the em dash”) that ChatGPT volition beryllium amended astatine not utilizing the em dash if you instruct it not to via the customized instructions successful your personalization settings. That means it won’t needfully destruct the em dash from its output by default, but you volition astatine slightest person much power implicit the frequence of its appearance.

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