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.
Vicki G., age 31, who asked to use a pseudonym, 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.”
AI-powered writing generators have replaced dogs as man’s best friend. Well, at least emotionally immature men! 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!
asked ChatGPT to respond to my friend’s ex’s apology 😭 pic.twitter.com/hRavM9b4My
— bread (@pizzapurist) March 30, 2024
Vicki 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.’”
Vicki is far from alone when it comes to being on the receiving end of an AI-generated text. 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 recently took to Twitter to share a similar experience. “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 tweeted. “And then lo and behold we tracked it to [ChatGPT].”
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, and then lo and behold we tracked it to chat gpt 🤢
— Bolu Babalola is technically on leave 🍯&🌶 (@BeeBabs) April 7, 2024
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!
When Jennifer M., 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 fair, 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?”
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. And while the ethics of AI is still a work in progress, 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.”
