I installed one of these myself recently, and it’s been pretty interesting to see which sites might use AI-generated text. It’s not a guarantee that they’re AI-generated of course, but it definitely helps to make me think twice.
Firefox:
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/em-dash-detector/
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/em-dash-highlighter/
Chrome:
While interesting—in a curious sort of way—I think it will simply reveal that a whole lot of stuff on the Internet has been automatically replacing dashes with em dashes for a long time. Also, a whole lot of professional writers have been using it since forever.
A better “aha! AI!” catch is post-2020 usage of emojis as bullet points. Though, that really only catches ChatGPT and Claude (Gemini and the other models don’t do it as much unless they know they’re making a README.md).
I agree, there are legitimate writers who use em dashes often, but I think this tool also helps you distinguish those from AI-generated content. There’s a different quality in the way AI generated text uses the em-dash. Often the ratio of em-dashes to the rest of the text is much higher, and it’s usually used to complete a point, as opposed to an interjection like you just did in your comment. I think that’s easy to spot when you know to look for it.
