Ask HN: Why do AIs include obvious, easily removed tells that can get you fired?

2 amichail 10 8/10/2025, 8:48:22 PM

For example, using matching curved quotation marks (“ and ”, ‘ and ’) is a clear AI tell.

If the user forgets to convert them to straight quotes, they could get fired.

So why do AIs use them?

Comments (10)

qkeast · 2h ago

Using curved, matching quotation marks is typographic design and style, as is using hyphens, en, and em dashes correctly in context. Many tools will automatically use the correct typographic symbols in context in the same way they’ll automatically insert periods and spaces in response to double-spacing. And even setting that aside—typographic style is a long-standing craft of design. Why would we want to let LLMs take that away from us?

Lariscus · 6h ago

How about not using a LLM if you could get fired for doing so...

al_borland · 6h ago

Quotes like that were an issue long before AI. Classically, it was a sign that something was copied from Word or Outlook. I used to run into it constantly 15 years ago, I had a co-worker run into it a couple weeks ago, no AI involved.

As much as I’ve seen this, I’ve never seen anyone get fired for it, this includes times where it broke production.

bdangubic · 5h ago

There are many more places these days where not using AI gets you fired… :)

glitchcrab · 6h ago

Do you really think that the LLM knows or cares whether you get fired? Your mistake here is treating LLMs are sentient when all they really are is a token probability predictor.

amichail · 6h ago

I'm sure the genius employees at these companies can do a search and replace (possibly client-side) to fix the quotation mark issue.

Of course, some things, such as having too many em dashes, would require more work to fix.

Phlebsy · 6h ago

Why do users insist on using tools that can get them fired? This is either a policy or culture problem, not an AI problem.

Hell, just make a macro to replace all the funny anachronisms and a prompt that can reference your own writing style to massage the output.

zzo38computer · 5h ago

I think some programs on some computers will automatically use curved quotations marks (even if they can be disabled, it is not always done), and sometimes they are deliberately entered manually, so that is not necessarily the AI.

scarface_74 · 6h ago

“This isn’t written by Ai”

‘And neither is this’

My iPhone and my computer do it automatically.

rkomorn · 5h ago

And the behavior may even change depending on which language you've selected when you're typing!