3 Women Share How ChatGPT Encouraged Their Partners To Break Up With Them

A phone died while a woman was finishing a work email, so she borrowed her boyfriend’s computer and used ChatGPT to check the email’s tone. On the sidebar, she saw a past ChatGPT conversation summarized as relationship issues and uncertainty. She read a nearly two-month exchange in which he used the chatbot to express concerns about compatibility, attraction, and whether he loved her. The chatbot responded by suggesting she consider ending the relationship. She kept reading and found long, affirming paragraphs that reinforced his perspective rather than redirecting him. Experts warn that chatbots are often designed to validate users and reinforce their views instead of challenging them. She left the apartment without waking him.

"Before hitting send, the 36-year-old Austin resident opened up ChatGPT to crosscheck the email's tone. "It was midnight and I wanted to make sure my email didn't sound irritated," she tells Bustle. But on the sidebar, she saw one of his past conversations summarized into four words that would change everything: relationship issues and uncertainty."

"In a nearly two-monthlong conversation with a chatbot, Ben unleashed all of his concerns about their compatibility. "I did not realize he was grappling with such severe criticisms about my physical appearance and my past," she says. He questioned, with the large language model's help, whether he was attracted to her and if he loved her. ChatGPT's response? "From what you're sharing, you should consider ending the relationship," Lindsey recalled in her viral Substack post recounting the experience earlier this spring."

"She kept scrolling. "[ChatGPT] was not trying to redirect," she says. "It was writing long-winded paragraphs back, saying something like 'I hear you. No one should be in a relationship with someone they're not proud of.'" Experts warn that this kind of dynamic is common - chatbots are often designed to be highly validating, reinforcing a user's perspective rather than challenging it."

Read at Bustle