The Em Dash Becomes Collateral Damage in AI Writing Panic
Nike faced accusations this week of using AI to write a social media post about tennis champion Jake Sinner. The evidence? An em dash.
A viral X post flagged the punctuation mark as a "GPT AI-ism," triggering a wave of disapproval. The claim exposes a widening problem: any competent writing is now treated as potentially machine-generated.
The panic has real consequences for creatives. Authors are adding "no AI was used" disclaimers to book covers. Publishers are printing "Human Authored" labels. Writers face suspicion for using standard punctuation and clear prose.
Bad writing existed before AI
Staccato LinkedIn posts with phrases like "In today's fast-paced digital landscape" do carry an obvious AI rhythm. But the leap from "this sounds automated" to "this uses an em dash, therefore it's AI" ignores a basic fact: humans have used em dashes for centuries.
The issue runs deeper than punctuation. When critics discuss AI art, they acknowledge that models learned from human artists. That visual styles originate in human creativity. Yet the same logic doesn't apply to writing. Nobody argues that AI writing styles belong to writers - even though they do.
The cadence of polished essays, explanatory writing, and motivational posts all predate generative AI. Bad writers have always existed. Clarity and competence have always existed.
The contradiction in AI skepticism
The current moment creates a strange inversion: competent writing becomes suspicious. Typos and rushed prose feel safer. This suggests the solution isn't declaring war on punctuation and clarity.
For creatives in any field, the stakes matter. Writers face legitimate concerns about AI-generated content flooding markets and job displacement. But distinguishing between human and machine writing remains difficult. Spotting a deepfake video has technical markers. Spotting AI text has become a mystical art.
Paranoia about machine writing won't solve that problem. It just makes competence itself look suspicious.
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