If we have to ask ChatGPT everything, we're in trouble

As actor Jennifer Lawrence reveals she relied on the AI service for breastfeeding advice during a tough moment, just how reliant are we becoming on robots

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Robots are telling us how to live.

It was only a matter of time; after all, around 700 million of us are now using ChatGPT on a weekly basis. And, according to data released by the chatbot's parent company, OpenAI, around 70 per cent of consumer usage is not related to work. In recent months, there have been increasing reports of people forming intimate relationships with their ChatGPT bots. And earlier this month, OpenAI announced plans to allow erotic content on the service.

I know people who use it for everything from medical advice and legal information to helping with Hinge prompts and drafting texts to romantic partners. Now even artists, the very same group whose livelihood is threatened by the broader technology, are fessing up to using the service, with Jennifer Lawrence telling The New Yorker that she used ChatGPT for breastfeeding advice while she was crying. “You’re doing the most amazing thing for your baby,” the bot told her in response, adding, “You're such a loving mother.”

The interviewer, Jia Tolentino, adds that Lawrence, who has two sons with her husband, Cooke Maroney, found the response “called into question the sincerity of anyone else” who said the same. But Tolentino doesn’t ask Lawrence why she asked ChatGPT anything in the first place, which, frankly, was the thing I found most alarming, because it indicates just how normalised this behaviour has become, when the act of asking a robot for help and emotional support should surely be anything but.