ChatGPT Is Not Your Friend (guest post by Grace Helton)

Part One of a two-part seriesby Grace Helton (guest blogger)[Paul Klee, Angel Applicant, 1939; source]Some people have come to interact with ChatGPT as though it were a kind of friend or romantic partner. For instance, a 2025 New York Times article describes the case of Ayrin, a human who fell in love with her ChatGPT “boyfriend.” Ayrin is far from alone. Twenty percent of high school students have used AI romantically or knew someone who had. Several start-ups have developed large language models (LLMs) specifically designed to play the role of a companion. For instance, the San Francisco-based company Replika describes its core product as an “AI best friend.”Many people have raised concerns about humans engaging with LLMs in the manner of a friend or romantic partner. To cite just a few of these: Humans in such relationships might focus on these relationships at the cost of building more fulfilling, if also more challenging, relationships with humans. Humans who are emotionally…