I was writing a detailed response to someone’s post and suddenly got a notification that my comment was marked as artificially generated. The only thing I can think of is that I used an em dash in my writing. This seems really strange to me because I always use em dashes when I write. They help make my thoughts clearer and I have been using them for years in my personal writing style. Is this really a thing now where using proper punctuation marks makes the system think a bot wrote your content? Has anyone else experienced this issue? I am genuinely confused about why this would trigger an AI detection system.
i totally get it! this is kinda wild, right? i usein em dashes too, no problems yet. it’s probably just a weird bug. maybe try mixing up your punctuation? hope it helps!
Same thing happened to me three months ago with a technical review. Got flagged even though I wrote everything myself. Turns out AI detectors hate formal writing and proper punctuation - good human writing looks “too structured” to them, which is ridiculous. I reached out to support and they fixed it in 48 hours. The rep said their system was being overly sensitive that week and they constantly see false positives from people who write consistently or use punctuation correctly. If this keeps happening, document your writing process and definitely appeal these decisions.
Same thing happened to me on academic forums last year. The algorithm probably wasn’t flagging just the em dash—it was your clean writing and grammar that set it off. Most people don’t know AI detectors actually penalize good writing because it looks too much like how AI generates text. I fixed it by mixing up my style more—different sentence starters, switching up transition words, throwing in contractions when I normally wouldn’t. It’s ridiculous that these systems punish the writing habits we learned in school. Always appeal though. Human reviewers usually flip these decisions fast once they actually read your stuff.
Detection systems are super wonky right now. I’ve watched them flag the weirdest stuff at my job.
AI detectors hunt for patterns that seem “too perfect” or match specific writing styles. Em dashes might trigger something it picked up during training.
But it’s probably not just the dash. Your sentence structure, word choices, and that dash combined probably set something off.
Rewrite the same content with different sentence lengths and add some casual language. That usually tricks these systems when they’re being overly picky.
Message the mods directly too. Most platforms know their AI detection throws false positives and they’ll manually review it.
AI detectors throwing false positives? Yeah, it’s a nightmare for anyone creating content. These things are just pattern-matching bots that flag anything ‘too clean’ or structured.
Happens to my team all the time with technical docs and proposals. Don’t waste time changing how you write or dumbing down your punctuation.
Here’s what actually works: automate your content before these broken detectors see it. Build a system that processes your writing, mixes up sentence structure, and runs multiple checks.
I set up a workflow that takes my content, paraphrases it, tests it against different AI detectors, then only submits when everything passes. Takes 30 seconds and saves me hours of appeals.
Best part? You can customize different paths for different platforms since they all use different detection systems. Some hate clean punctuation, others flag word patterns.
This is only getting worse as more platforms add detection, so automation beats constantly tweaking your writing style.