In CAI Currents, The American Psychoanalyst
Valerie Frankfeldt, PhD, and Todd Essig, PhD
Unlike Cyrano, who hid his love for Roxane inside someone else’s identity, AI doesn’t give a damn about your intimate when you use it to write your words of love and care. But the ending points in the same tragic direction: unrequited love, loneliness, loss, and mourning. Just get that Hollywood happy Steve Martin feel-good ending out of your mind.
One patient uploaded a text fight so ChatGPT could write a compelling apology. But their lover knew it was AI-generated eloquence, not something from the heart. Now, they’re not even talking.
Another patient tried to console a grieving friend. Rather than send their own words from a soulful place of struggle from having their friend’s pain in mind, they sent Claude’s eloquent, smooth but soulless response. Their friend responded with rage at being abandoned at such a vulnerable, fragile time. They needed their friend, not a well-appointed ringer.
Making AI a third in intimate relationships is not just something in clinical practice. Ellie Zolfagharifard, writing in Wired, plumbed the depths of AI as an often unwanted third. She even included a recent survey of UK adults where 11 percent admitted they use AI to rewrite or edit private messages.
Some take the dangers of AI writing even further. At the extreme, one finds people like Bret Stephens arguing in a New York Times Op-Ed, “Don’t use artificial intelligence to help you write. Never let A.I. do your writing for you.” But in this you may hear the baby going down the drain with the bathwater.
AI can be useful in writing when one is producing text to serve a specific function, like an appeal letter to an insurance company. It can even be useful as an interactive self-help tool. For example, it can help regulate affect and help you find your authentic response in difficult moments, such as dealing with a text fight with your partner or consoling a grieving friend. You might also find islands of insight and prompts for actual reflection according to APA’s Guide to Navigating AI-Generated Advice.
But substituting for interpersonal intimacy, using it as a stand-in for one’s heart and soul? Even in the best case, a feel-good Steve Martin ending, it would be the AI in relationship with your intimate, not you.