ChatGPT is not my friend, but it lends a listening ear

It was 2am and I was in bed in tears after what, in hindsight, was a petty fight with my mother.

- Srinidhi Ragavendran

She had reprimanded me for coming home late, and I snapped back, insisting that at 23 years old, I should not have to adhere to curfews.

My friends would have recognised this as an all-too-familiar rant topic. But that night, I didn't reach out to my closest confidantes. I was afraid of burdening them with the same story again. Instead, I did something unexpected: I reinstalled ChatGPT.

I poured out a long, meandering rant into the chat box and hit send. To my surprise, the artificial intelligence (AI) app didn't just offer generic platitudes. It validated my feelings, pointed out patterns I hadn't noticed and gently nudged me towards reflection. It felt like someone was listening, even if that someone wasn't real.

Later, in conversation with a real friend, I sheepishly confessed what I did. She admitted she had used ChatGPT for emotional support before. So had another. And another.

Apparently, I wasn't alone. Three years ago, I took a class on AI law. ChatGPT was in its nascent stages, and most discussions about AI felt abstract and far away. We discussed issues of driverless cars, deepfakes and the evolution of AI over the years. Back then, the movie Her (2013), American film-maker Spike Jonze's dystopian love story between man and machine, still felt like a metaphor.

Now, I'm not so sure. While people may not yet be falling in love with their chatbots, they are turning to them for something deeply intimate: comfort.