Great catch! That’s a really interesting observation — but no, using em dashes and emojis alone is not a reliable way to tell AI text from human-written text.

Here’s why:

1️⃣ Humans and AI both use em dashes and emojis

Skilled human writers often use em dashes for style, tone, or emphasis (like in essays, journalism, or fiction).

Modern AI models, including ChatGPT, are trained on vast amounts of text — including texts that use em dashes extensively — so they use them naturally.

2️⃣ Em dash frequency varies by context

In formal writing (e.g., academic papers), em dashes are less common, regardless of author.

In casual or conversational writing, both humans and AIs may use them liberally.

3️⃣ Stylometric features are broader than one punctuation mark

When people try to detect AI-generated text, they usually analyze a combination of features:

Average sentence length

Vocabulary richness

Repetition patterns

Syntactic structures

Overuse or underuse of certain constructions

Punctuation is just one small part of these analyses and isn’t decisive on its own.

✅ Bottom line: Em dashes can hint at style, but they aren’t a reliable “tell” for AI detection on their own. You need a holistic analysis of multiple stylistic and structural features to make a meaningful judgment.

🤖 Why emojis aren’t a clear tell for AI

1️⃣ AI can easily include emojis if prompted Modern AI models can and do use emojis naturally when asked to write in a casual or friendly tone. In fact, they can even mimic how humans use them in different contexts (e.g., sparingly or heavily, ironically or sincerely).

2️⃣ Humans vary wildly in emoji usage Some humans use emojis constantly, especially in texting or on social media. Others almost never use them, even in casual writing. Age, culture, and personal style all influence this.

3️⃣ Emojis can be explicitly requested or omitted If you tell an AI “don’t use emojis,” it won’t. Similarly, you can tell it “use lots of emojis,” and it will. So it’s not an inherent trait.

4️⃣ Stylometric detection relies on more than one feature Like em dashes, emojis are only one aspect of style. Real detection tools look at patterns like sentence structure, repetitiveness, word choice entropy, and coherence across paragraphs — not single markers.

✅ When might emojis suggest AI text?

If there is excessively consistent or mechanical emoji usage (e.g., one emoji at the end of every sentence, all very literal), it might suggest machine-generated text or an automated marketing bot.

But even then, it’s not a guarantee — some humans also write this way, especially in advertising.

💡 Bottom line: Emojis alone are not a reliable clue. You need a combination of markers — repetition, coherence, style shifts, and other linguistic fingerprints — to reasonably guess if something is AI-generated.

If you’d like, I can walk you through some actual features that are better indicators (like burstiness, perplexity, or certain syntactic quirks). Want me to break that down?

Just referencing a longstanding meme in line with the OP, bro. I didn’t realize not watching a single movie made me completely ignorant, but then I guess that’s the ignorance in action. Anyway thanks for the unnecessary condescension over fucking batman :)

I’ve never seen that movie, but okay. Many apologies.

Batman: “I would never take the life of even the most evil of villains” Breaks the neck of a petty thief Snaps the femur of a low level Mafia grunt

Still not getting it.

He makes videos. Another YouTube channel scrapes and summarizes his videos with AI. This other YouTube channel sends him unsolicited emails, presumably written with an LLM, trying to get him to endorse generative AI services.
He had Gemini summarize the emails.
He had NotebookLM generate a podcast from those Gemini summaries?
???
Shit I need to get back to work.

That’s not Salesforce tower.

No both are still true and not conflicting at all.

Weird I thought pimento was the son.

Yes, people vehemently hate when you point this out because to the general public NFT = stupid overpriced digital art, and they don’t care to be convinced otherwise. My personal conspiracy theory is that the two were purposefully conflated to keep the technology from ever being taken seriously.

In his defense he did get MK-Ultrad.

You can’t eat your cake and have it too

Heck, I still use my old Zune. Replaced the battery, hard drive, and screen a couple of years ago and the thing is a beast.

This guy is a band naming genius

I honestly think people underestimate how much they’re influenced by this kind of thing in a neutral, sober state. But marketing doesn’t.

U mad?

Well it doesn’t look like text lol Just having some fun with you. Work is a slog today -_-

Are you attempting to troll me? You replied to me. I refuted your comment and you tell me to calm down, which for you to act like a basic conveyance of information is emotionally charged is a common troll tactic. I then ask what you’re talking about and you tell me it’s not that serious. Well it’s serious now, buddy! You better start talking or I am going to FREAK. THE. FUCK. OUT. You interacted with me. You wanted this.

That is my point exactly. The actors on St. Denis Medical and Animal Control are much more diverse looks-wise than sitcoms like Friends or How I met Your Mother or anything people praise from the past.

What gave you the impression that I’m angry? And given that in response to me you’ve taken back what you’ve said and clarified you were exaggerating both your lack of knowledge on the topic and your claims regarding the average person it sounds like you’re angry at me that I called you on those. Let’s call the whole thing off.