Dear Editor,
Allow me to share a small but revealing detail with the United Progressive Party. It is called the em dash — a long dash that looks like this: –
Em dashes are frequently used by artificial intelligence writing tools and have become a recognisable marker of AI-generated text. The UPP's much-discussed manifesto is littered with em dashes. More tellingly, the party's formal response to the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party's criticism of that manifesto also contains a significant number of them.
To be fair, the tool in question may not be ChatGPT specifically. It could be Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, or X's Grok. But whatever the platform, the fingerprints of artificial intelligence are unmistakable.
Why does this matter? It speaks to a fundamental weakness. It signals laziness. And it raises a serious question about whether this party is genuinely prepared for the responsibilities of government.
If a political party cannot produce its own manifesto, cannot draft its own press releases, and cannot even take the basic step of removing tell-tale em dashes to conceal its reliance on AI, the conclusion is difficult to avoid: the UPP is not ready to govern this country.
This Thursday, do not take a risk with the UPP.
