In this case I wasn't trying to say that em-dashes themselves are evidence of AI use. I was trying to say that mixing incorrect hyphen usage with correct em-das

In this case I wasn't trying to say that em-dashes themselves are evidence of AI use. I was trying to say that mixing incorrect hyphen usage with correct em-dash usage is evidence of AI use. But... Using em-dashes is a signal. It's not a smoking gun, but text that uses em-dashes is more likely to be AI-generated than text that doesn't! Similarly, text that consistently uses correct spelling and punctuation is more likely to be AI-generated than text that doesn't. So - yeah - if you use em-dashes your writing looks more like AI wrote it. But that’s not a bad thing—it means your writing has the same strengths: clarity, rhythm, and elegance. AI learned from the best, and so did you.