No one enjoys a good chat like my old best friend. Supper used to signify our favourite time of day, reserved for over-analysing whatever social fiasco had been occupying her mind. We’d pick apart friendships gone awry and laugh over our most absurd dating dilemmas. But at some point, these gossip sessions stopped, and in their place, a laptop was brought in, and ChatGPT positioned itself as the newest and most opinionated member of our social circle.
I was and still am deeply offended by my friend’s apparently replacing me with AI. How could she replace all the wisdom and care that I’ve gathered from our years together with a chatbot that requires monthly financial upkeep? Like many other people in their early twenties, I am accustomed to hearing how AI is stealing any future jobs I might have. I was not prepared to discover that it would be stealing my friends, too.
For my friend, her use of chatbots started out as academic assistance and morphed into something more personal. Friendship problems began to be solved by asking a prompt rather than thinking it through herself, with answers delivered in a tone and style that bizarrely mimicked her own. And it wasn’t just answers she was seeking; it was comfort, support, even empathy – an emotion I assumed to be exclusively human. Our conversations were eventually replaced by a one-sided monologue regurgitated from her interactions with this new AI pal, and God forbid I tried to suggest that this might be wrong.
Our supper-time gossip sessions fell by the wayside as it became obvious which of the three of us was actually the unwanted third wheel. In some ways, it’s reassuring to discover I’m not alone in feeling replaced; others are beginning to find themselves in the same predicament. Like that natural path from acquaintances to friends, more people are moving from using ChatGPT as a tool to perceiving it as a buddy. With AI performing the tasks that previously provided the bedrock of our friendships, it’s only inevitable to expect these friendships to weaken while our dependency on AI strengthens. “I feel useless”, one of my friends told me, “We don’t exchange dating advice anymore, we just type a situation into ChatGPT and wait for it to determine our next move.”
And it’s not just affecting our relationships with our friends. One friend holds ChatGPT’s opinion in such high esteem that she dumped a boy the second AI deemed him unworthy. Not to defend said boy – I never got to meet him – but I do hope that any future relationships I enter into won’t be subject to the judgment of a mysterious AI dictator.
The big problem here is that the advice we’re receiving from ChatGPT isn’t really advice at all, it’s self-validation. That it seeks nothing but your approval makes it incredibly addictive to use – how delicious being told you are always right. And unlike my supper-time availability for gossip, ChatGPT is at your disposal wherever and whenever you need it. It never goes to work or forgets to ring you back. It never judges you or asks you to switch the conversation onto itself. So, what’s even the point in seeking out human opinion when it’s messy, unreliable, and crowded with self-interest?
A new iteration of ChatGPT appeared this month, so I decided to message my old friend to ask her how she’s finding it. She informed me that this version is far more intelligent but slightly less complimentary. For a second, I felt hopeful. Would the lack of flattery within ChatGPT-5 mean I’ll get my friend back? But then it dawned on me, like many of us, she’s been hooked, and the fact that her robot friend has somehow discovered a more confident voice only risks making mine – human, unpredictable – even less necessary.
