In the arena of love, people have used ChatGPT and other chatbots to flirt for them, date for them, and even try to catch men lying about their height. Now, the LLM is deployed to “win” fights against one’s partner.
“My girlfriend uses Chat GPT every time we have a disagreement. AITAH [Am I The Asshole] for saying she needs to stop?” So asked Reddit user drawss4scoress on r/AITA, a subreddit to ask if you’re in the wrong for any given situation. As the user, who described himself as a 25-year-old man, said, his 28-year-old girlfriend of eight months “discusses” arguments with ChatGPT whenever they fight, even in the same room.
This girlfriend will apparently come back to the argument with conversation points from ChatGPT. She’ll say that ChatGPT called her boyfriend insecure, or that he doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth for what she’s saying.
“My big issue is it’s her formulating the prompts so if she explains that i’m [sic] in the wrong, it’s going to agree without me having a chance to explain things,” drawss4scoress wrote.
Mashable After Dark
While this story isn’t verified as true (and drawss4scoress didn’t respond to Mashable’s request for comment), it’s believable enough to indicate something about the current state of interpersonal communication.
Communication is hard, especially when talking through a disagreement. We might not know how to work through conflict, because it was never modeled to us — that’s why guides to setting boundaries (and viral templates to set boundaries) exist.
This can be especially true for younger adults who came of age during lockdown. During the brunt of the pandemic, Gen Z missed out on face-to-face social interaction at work and beyond. Nearly half (44 percent) told Hinge they had little-to-no dating experience at the start of 2024, with Gen Z 47 percent more likely than millennials to say the pandemic made them nervous to talk to new people. Digital communication was (and still likely is) king — and we know how people fight online.
It’s not surprising, then, that this girlfriend would resort to ChatGPT to figure out what to say in an argument. But whereas the LLM tells her her boyfriend doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth, that actually might be the case for her if she can’t work through a fight on her own. Even ChatGPT says not to do this (according to a commenter on the thread), saying that AI shouldn’t replace human-to-human interaction and can’t substitute for the complexity of human relationships. Let’s hope this Reddit user doesn’t use ChatGPT to pen his breakup message.
