Just a few years ago, the em dash was an ordinary form of punctuation used by writers to emphasize, interrupt and set aside ideas. (It gets its name from typesetting, historically being the exact width of the capital letter "M.")
Now, AI models like ChatGPT and Claude use it as a common connector, standing in the place of commas and semicolons to string together phrases of all kinds.
Grammatically, it's fine. Aesthetically, it's nice. But audiences are becoming wary of its association with artificial intelligence, so much so that in May, social media users swarmed Nike with accusations of using AI when the company deployed the dash in a post celebrating tennis star Jannik Sinner.
Jannik Sinner can do it all. 6 consecutive titles, a career Golden Masters, and a new record set on home soil. This isn't just history — it's his story in the making. pic.twitter.com/ccPdjJbbjL
— Nike (@Nike) May 17, 2026
