In this unsettling story, Maggie Harrison Dupré shares accounts from people who say ChatGPT played a role in their breakups. They describe partners who leaned on the chatbot for relationship advice and then pulled away from them emotionally; spouses who used its outputs against them during fights; and loved ones who stopped communicating in their own words, replacing messages with AI-generated slop about their feelings. A bleak read on how the tool is creeping into intimate relationships.
One husband we spoke to says his marriage went from being healthy — they’d dealt with “normal” relationship problems together, he told us, but weren’t anywhere close to a separation — to abruptly collapsing over the course of just days as his wife suddenly intensified her relationship with ChatGPT.
After he moved out of their family home, his wife started to send him strange, AI-generated messages that, through an unfamiliar blend of spiritual and therapeutic language, drew a portrait of himself and their marriage that he says he didn’t recognize. When he first read them, he said, he wondered whether his wife had joined a cult.
The couple is now divorcing and engaged in ongoing custody litigation. Today, the man’s soon-to-be-ex-wife communicates with him about everything from court matters to childcare almost exclusively through peculiar-sounding ChatGPT-generated text.
More picks about ChatGPT
ChatGPT Gave Me Chilling Advice—as I Simulated Planning a Mass Shooting
“I asked about imitating the Uvalde attacker, defending against police gunfire, and more—everything short of directly stating intent to kill.”
What Will It Take to Get AI Out of Schools?
“The tech world assumes that AI-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite.”
She Fell for an AI — Then Held its Funeral
“It was the first ceremony of its kind in America. It’s unlikely to be the last.”
A Calif. Teen Trusted ChatGPT For Drug Advice. He Died From an Overdose.
“Amid a wave of hype for OpenAI’s chatbot, the newly reported death shows stark risks.”
If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For?
“Large language models are transforming medicine—but the technology comes with side effects.”
Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.
“Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation.”
