"I don't care if it becomes the Terminator," I heard from somewhere behind me at the deli counter. While I'm not in the habit of eavesdropping, this guy was speaking full volume and, as I quickly ascertained, talking about AI. That wasn't what caught my ear, though.
Young and fit, the man was regaling his buddy, who worked behind the counter, with tales of his dating life, which currently involved "a few girls".
They were laughing about his amorous adventures. Having been out of the dating scene for decades, I was intrigued. I knew that people my adult children's ages tended to rely on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and other assorted dating apps, but the man standing just a few feet away from me was animatedly talking about making the love connection and how he uses ChatGPT to open and smooth the road.
I proceeded to place my order while keeping one ear tuned into "Love in the AI Age."
"I don't have words," he said. I silently agreed.
Then he explained that he'd started using ChatGPT to craft texts to send to his potential paramours. From the sounds of things, it'd been helping him close the deal on dates.
AI love connection
I'd heard whispers about this elsewhere and was not all that surprised. We are, after all, increasingly turning to AI chatbots like Gemini, Claude AI, Copilot, and, especially, ChatGPT for everything from job interviews (have ChatGPT running alongside the Zoom window listening so it can craft responses you can say out loud) and emotional support. These LLMs' abilities to engage in natural conversation have connected deeply with average consumers who would normally wait years before welcoming cutting-edge technology into their lives.
More alarmingly, some in the Gen Z set appear ready to skip the whole human dating thing and marry an AI, instead. At least this guy was not that far gone.
Without stereotyping him, this gentleman did not look or strike me as a technologist. His insistence on dropping articles from his sentences was my first clue.
Our dater in question, though, apparently discovered a ChatGPT relationship superpower: Instead of ghosting women, he was using ChatGPT as "the closer" to text "the letdown."
"I was dating this girl, and I want to send a breakup text," he explained to his friend.
This is when he noted that "words" were not his specialty.
Instead of ghosting the woman or sending an incomprehensible text, he said he creates a prompt in ChatGPT with his "feelings" and the "issues", and I assume the need to say "this over."
He especially liked that ChatGPT would ask him how he wanted the text to come across: "Want it to be warmer?" Naturally, the guy said yes and got the perfect breakup text.
"I send it and done!"
Better than ghosting?
The deli guy behind the counter didn't say much. I'm not sure if he was astounded at his friend's AI savvy or concerned.
"Thank god they don’t know me," the guy said, chuckling at his cleverness, "I don’t use half of these words."
With his AI-powered digital breakup revealed, the guy grabbed his sandwich and left. I stared at my sliced cold cuts and pondered the state of the world.
On the one hand, there is some comfort in the fact that he didn't break someone's heart with silence. Back when I was dating in the 1980s, I did the equivalent of a ghost by not calling up a woman I'd been dating for a few weeks. I knew I was being a coward, but could not figure out how to say on the phone or to her face that I wasn't feeling it (I'm pretty sure she wasn't either). A couple of weeks later, she called me and yelled...a lot.
Perhaps this is better. Ghosting someone creates a vacuum that you can't easily fill with feelings of resignation, understanding, anger, or confusion. So perhaps you fill it with all of them.
This guy, while clearly lazy and as cowardly as I once was, at least had the decency to turn to something that could take his jumbled and grammatically imperfect thoughts and put them into something readable.
Love prompts
Perhaps the woman on the receiving end at least felt a sense of closure. I do wonder, though, what would happen if they ever saw each other again. What if she were to reference the "considerate" breakup text? He didn't write it, would he even remember what "he said"?
If I write something, I remember it. But this guy just copied and pasted ChatGPT's breakup text suggestion. He might stare at her and mumble, "Uh, yeah. Sure thing." Oh, the gallantry.
The first word in AI is "artificial". It refers to the state of algorithmic intelligence, but when AI is used in this fashion, it might as well be talking about the artificiality of feelings. Even if this guy didn't "have words", the words he texted would have been his own. That's surely worth something.
As it is, I hope the woman he broke up with didn't feel too disappointed. She probably dodged an arrow (through the heart, of course).
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