Gen Z figure out how to tell who's using ChatGPT as one common sign might be giving you away without realising

In response to growing concern that artificial intelligence is on the rise in professional circuits, a batch of Gen Zs claim to have determined the key to discovering who is using ChatGPT for written content.

For those out of the loop, the platform is a chatbot founded in 2022 by the advanced technological firm OpenAI.

ChatGPT can write entire essays, make suggestions, forge poems and solve problems, all while using human-like language.

Its increasingly sophisticated means of word generating mean that as time goes on, the system's programme will become more and more innately human, which can pose a problem in terms of literary jobs and other professions that involve a considerable amount of writing.

And before you ask, I'm definitely not shaking with anxiety while writing this story...

Chatbots can assist with written content (Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Stock Images)

Anyway, a handful of youngsters recently put forward a theory that there's a means of vetting whether a piece of written work had been authentically done so 'by hand', or whether bots had intervened in some way.

And apparently, it's all down to the so-called 'ChatGTP hyphen'.

For those in need of a reminder, a hyphen - also known as a dash - is a piece of punctuation used to break up a sentence.

Common in magazines and news articles - such as this piece - the symbol can serve as an alternative to a common, colon or brackets, in that they supply a small, additional piece of information.

These hyphens either emphasise on a point already being made in a sentence by providing more content, sum up the information at the end of the sentence, or emphasise a specific point.

Apparently, however, whilst some writers might use such punctuation regularly in the work, social media experts have issued a warning against relying too heavily on hyphens, as they're commonly used in AI pieces of work.

There is supposedly a means of checking whether written content has been done authentically (Oscar Wong/Getty Stock Images)

In particular, it is said that bots prefer to use elongated dashes without spaces—like this. Shorter ones used by legitimate writers, however, usually include a space - as such.

The point was recently emphasised by LuxeGen Podcast hosts Daisy Reed and Sapna Rao, who called out a popular fashion brand for including a stream of dashes while recently announcing their rebrand.

Reed pointed out in the podcast that the top comment on the brand's post read, 'Including the ChatGPT hyphen is insane', implying hundreds of others are in on the ChatGPT hack.

Issuing a 'public service announcement', the podcaster continued: "If you’re at school and you’re using [ChatGPT] for your essays, take out the hyphens. I can always tell."

Reed also encouraged her followers to check back through any work they've 'written' with the help of artificial intelligence, and put chucks of text back into their own work.

"Person, ChatGPT, person," Rao added.