Vicki, age 31, had been in an exclusive relationship for three months when she received a breakup text out of nowhere. “He randomly sent me this really long text,” she tells Betches. After I got over being blindsided and genuinely sad, I kept re-reading it, and it hit me: This man used ChatGPT to pad his breakup text.”
Everybody knows somebody who has used AI to craft an uncomfortable message. A coworker put in their two-week notice with some help from Gemini. A friend used ChatGPT to outline an angry email to their landlord. And some people use AI to write breakup texts. In fact, using ChatGPT to write a breakup text has become so common that The Washington Post developed a quiz-type game where you guess which breakup texts are written by a human or AI-generated. How fun and not creepy at all!
Vicki, who asked to use a pseudonym, says she suspected the use of AI almost immediately. “The more I thought about it, I was like, wow, he did love ChatGPT and used it often.” That’s when she decided to test the theory. “I took myself over to ChatGPT and typed in what I imagined he’d type using context clues. The text I got from AI was literally the same. It had the same cadence, same vibe, but he sprinkled in some personal deets to make it more ‘personal.’”
When Jennifer, age 39, received a breakup text from the guy she was seeing, her first thought was: “Did a robot write this, or is HE just a robot?” So, she put the text through an AI-detection tool. The more green, the higher chance they used AI. Below are the results:
To be clear, AI detection tools aren’t 100 percent accurate, but Jennifer wasn’t surprised by the results. “He bragged about using AI to perform about half his tasks at work,” she tells Betches. “Honestly, who writes this way? The text message looked like a robot wrote it. Is this what we should come to expect, having tools like ChatGPT to do our dirty work?”
Vicki and Jennifer are far from alone when it comes to being on the receiving end of an AI-generated text from someone they’re dating. In the past year, social media has been littered with almost identical stories, describing an eery suspicion that the message they received wasn’t written by a human. Author Bolu Babalola shared a similar experience on X (formerly Twitter). “Me and my friend were quite impressed by a man’s apology to them to the point where we got suspicious about the emotional intelligence displayed,” she wrote. “And then lo and behold we tracked it to [ChatGPT].”
While the jury is still out on the ethics around AI usage, I’m sure most can agree that replacing human connection (or the act of disconnecting via breakup) with a plagiarizing robot isn’t ideal. Still, is there ever a time when a person can use AI-generated messages for good? Instead of turning to ChatGPT, I polled my very human group chat for answers.
“Well, once someone’s cat died, and I wasn’t sure what to say, so I ChatGPT-ed condolences,” one friend admitted, adding defensively: “I didn’t know them well. I didn’t know the cat!”
“My coworker used ChatGPT to write the eulogy for his cousin’s funeral,” another friend added.
In both instances, they agreed they had to edit the message significantly because it was laying it on pretty thick. A common critique of AI-generated writing is how obviously non-human it is because NO NORMAL PERSON TALKS LIKE THAT!
Yet, more and more people are giving ChatGPT a chance to help their love life along. A new dating app called Rizz uses AI to craft responses to help you land dates. And while witty one-liners and pickup lines might get you someone’s number, what happens when you meet IRL? As Renee Rodriguez wrote for PopSugar, “If I were really shy in person, I would be worried about keeping up appearances once I finally met my date in real life.”
And if you do manage to get past the first date and then the second and so on, would you be willing to let AI into your full blown relationship? In a recent “Am I The Asshole” post, the Reddit user complained that every argument with his girlfriend ended with her discussing the details with ChatGPT.
“Whenever she does this she’ll then come back with a well constructed argument breaking down everything I said or did during our argument,” he writes. “I’ve been told that ‘ChatGPT says you’re insecure’ or ‘ChatGPT says you don’t have the emotional bandwidth to understand what I’m saying.'”
Finding the right thing to say in sensitive situations can be challenging, but isn’t that what makes us human? Apparently, even humanity is at the bare minimum regarding the hellscape of modern dating, but one would hope that people can still respect the sanctity of a breakup.
“We were dating for months!” Vicki says. “I watched his dog while he was away.”
