[jasonsb]

> Anyone who has had to clean up AI comments riddled with stupid emojis from their code will understand this.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji.

As for emojis appearing in EHRs, a more likely explanation is the growing presence of Gen Z professionals in healthcare, who are known for integrating emojis into their communication. This trend probably has little to do with AI and more to do with generational habits.

[RajT88]

I use AI daily and have to clean emojis.

It depends on the task, or the particular product/agent you're using. ChatGPT is a lot more emoji-heavy than say the business Copilot. Claude code, never. GitHub copilot never.

What I can tell you is, people I know who are SME's who are being paid several hundred thousand dollars a year this past year have started just copypastaing my questions into an LLM and regurgitating back to me whatever they said.

From my friend who is a director of a medical research library, a huge number of doctors recently switched from googling shit to just running it through the free ChatGPT.

[kube-system]

I don't think an 8x spike over a year would be in any way explained by a demographic shift.

I think your personal experiences are anecdotal, unique, and not representative of EHR users.

[jasonsb]

Well, it is. Let's say that AI adds emojis to my code/text. Me, a millennial who hates emojis, will tell the AI to delete those emojis and never use them again in my code or my official documents. The gen Z guy who got his first job last week will love to keep them.

[randycupertino]

I've noticed coworkers starting to use them in communication (emails, Teams chats, meeting minutes) so now maybe I see others doing it I feel it is fun and acceptable and might throw some in too. I wouldn't put them in code or EDC or any source documentation but an email sure why not.

I did have a scientist recently write a list of lab best practices and before he wrote the list he had a note "Follow instructions below" and then he had a finger pointing DOWN emoji pointing to the list... my work bestie and I actually screenshotted that and sent it to each other and were giggling about it, because he generally is a serious, smart, straight-laced dude and him putting in a garish down facing bright yellow finger emoji just seemed very silly compared to his personality. But it caught our attention and ensured we both read his list!

I would say the uptick is also partly responsible from people using their phones more often during work communication, if he sent that email from his phone instead of his computer it was easier to throw in an emoji to emphasize his important list.

[VanTheBrand]

Most people using LLMs wouldn’t even know you could tell it not to produce emoji. You are thinking about this like a coder not like a doctor.

[johnisgood]

If you can tell it instructions, and you know you can tell it instructions, then how smart do you have to be to realize that "omit emojis" is an instruction you can use? If what you said is true, I have no hope...

[supriyo-biswas]

There’s an option in ChatGPT’s settings to lessen the use of emojis. Though most people never bother to change the default setting and I didn’t know of it myself until recently.

[kube-system]

Most people are not anything like anyone on this website. But even if your personal opinions were universally shared, there is no way that what you are suggesting could even be mathematically possible. Gen-Z, being 15 years wide, enters the workforce at approximately 7% per year.

There were not ~800% more gen-z healthcare workers in 2025 than there were in 2024.

[0x1ch]

I'm Gen Z, also an engineer. I wouldn't bother removing them from the comments, but I wouldn't add them myself lol.

[nnnnico]

> I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji.

do you read this code? I find it hard to believe unless you have llm instructions in your codebase that you are not aware of

[Wowfunhappy]

Claude (the only model I use regularly) will definitely add emojis to non-code documentation and/or commit messages (which I almost never let it write, but it will sometimes try). However, I can't recall Claude ever adding emoji to code or in comments.

[zem]

it has added emoji to shell script status output for me (green ticks, red crosses, etc)

[Wowfunhappy]

Oh, yes it will do that sort of thing, I forgot about that. I don't think I mind in that context?

[jasonsb]

I always read and review the code and it's true that the old models from 2023/2024 were using a lot of emojis. But that code was garbage. Since LLMs have started to write decent code, I haven't seen one emoji.

[bpt3]

Gen Z has been entering the professional workforce (post college age) since approximately 2020, so I don't think they're to blame.

AI generated text is littered with emojis in my experience as well, often used as bullets in the lists it loves to generate.

[zenethian]

I just had Claude generate a readme for me and it added at least 10 emoji to it.

[kevin_thibedeau]

That's where they are prevalent. It's just mimicking its training set. If you use LLMs as Q&A oracles or code generators the emoji output is less frequent.

[CJefferson]

It must be different AIs.

I grade student work, and I see a lot of Python generated by AI. I don't know exactly which AI, but about a third of the work I see is littered with emojis.

[RicoElectrico]

In the conversational mode it shits them like crazy. Depends on a particular fine-tune though.

[nonethewiser]

Emojis are not widely used on platforms that dont make them easy to add. IE medical software on windows.

>I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji.

Yeah because they dont just add them to any generated code. Although if you ask them to make some sort of UI that might involve graphics, they will happily add lots of emojis. They do add them very liberally, especially in headings, for writing articles, blog posts, repots etc.

[tamimio]

> I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji.

It depends on what you ask it. Asking it to code won't generate a single emoji, but ask it to make a list, summarize something, and similar tasks and you will have it all over.

And I disagree with people who always try to stick whatever to "generational stuff" as if there's a distinct wall with total culture differences, plus assuming XYZ gen is a monolith to apply whatever label on. I think this is just an easy, lazy way to explain things that you couldn't understand or explain. Sure, you might have some differences between a 13-year-old and 55-year-old in some categories, but they still share a lot of common ground as well. But a 20-something and 30-something? Barely any difference, let alone at work where usually there are policies and whatnot that will restrict such differences from surfacing.

[zahlman]

> I have no idea what you're talking about. I code daily, with 80/90% of my work AI-assisted, and never had to clean one emoji.

Compare the READMEs of GitHub repositories for low-rated Show HN submissions in 2025 vs 2024. It's really clear.