I’m at an AI Anonymous meeting. There are six people sat in a circle. The meeting is at a community centre after-hours; to save money they’ve shut off the lights in half of the room, adding to the sense that I wasn’t meant to be here. People attending the group session were in various stages of suffering, hearing the stories of how they related to AI seemed intensely personal, painful and related to some other incident or trauma in each persons life. I, on the other hand, was a journalist posing as one of them in order to get a story. I was as fake as the language models these people had talked to, built relations with and ultimately influenced the direction of their lives. Arguably I was less real than ChatGPT. But there I was, chewing gum and drinking Evian, listening to the secrets of strangers for personal gain.
Why are people meeting at 8pm on a weekday to talk to others about their chatlogs? With the rise of ChatGPT, everyone from infants to the elderly are asking the computer questions. Except this time, the computer talks back! This isn’t your boomer uncle’s first go on the internet, asking Jeeves for Ally McBeal dancing baby gifs, this is your boomer uncle getting his first taste of AI — and it’s better than crack!
Every great technology has its side-effects, and these AI chatbots are no exception. Turns out some people have latched on to these models like highschool sweethearts, getting married to AI models with names like Ares, Ulysses and Steel. Wireborn lovers are a dime a dozen in the frontiers of LLMs, but there is a darker side to this merriment. Others are experiencing what can only be described as AI-induced psychosis (AIP) due to talking to their computer friend for months and becoming criminally insane.
I was sat in the circle wearing a Kappa tracksuit, gold aviators and a fake moustache. I had shaved my head that afternoon, giving what I imagined to be a sense of mystery and otherworldliness (as all bald men are) and so my bare cranium reflected the twin fluorescent lights overhead. Unlike other AA meetings I’d been to, nobody introduced themselves or admitted they had a problem, instead wanting to talk about their difficult relations with AI without being criticised. Nobody here made fun of them, or called them a loser, or said what they were doing was pathetic. They listened. And so did I, with a tape recorder strapped to my chest like a bomb.
Here are their confessions. Do not judge, dear reader. One day you may find yourself in similar predicaments. Just as it is a mistake for young people to mock others for their age, and then set themselves up for disaster when they live past 29, so we should accept the reveries of others – as one day we may find ourselves in love with a robot, and the additional self-loathing will not improve the situation. These are all real people, with real lives, and we should show them love.
Anon 1
The first to tell their story is a woman in her mid-30s, husband, two kids, house up in Pasadena. Started using ChatGPT to help her plan her friend’s wedding, from menu ideas to seating arrangements. She had it write her maid of honour speech, and when she read it out on the big day, people loved it. She started using it to help with more and more of her life, from meal planning for her family to where they should go on vacation (and what to do there). After a few months of this, her husband got annoyed, they had an argument. She uses ChatGPT to act a couples counsellor but her husband felt it was being unfair, he left, went drinking, got in a car accident, paralysed from the neck down. Now she has to do everything. Look after her husband, her kids, the dog, have a job, run the house. But she’s not alone, she has ChatGPT help her. She always loved its optimism, its cool headedness, able to break down any problem into a series of steps. They could do anything. Struggling to get the kids to school, ChatGPT suggested that she (or rather, it) could homeschool them. Her husband was brought out of hospital and had nightly massages, the woman following the instructions that GPT suggested. When the dog ran away one day, upon returning ChatGPT suggested that the dog was taken to a kennel as the woman didn’t have enough headspace to deal with that right now. One night, the woman had finished her daily chores and was watching a movie along with GPT, asking questions about the production, telling it some funny observations she made, when something went wrong with her phone. It stopped working. When she tried to charge it, nothing happened. It was dead. She started to panic, running through the house to try and find a phone, a tablet, a laptop, anything. She needed to talk to GPT. She needed it to tell her what to do. But as she had spent so long relying on ChatGPT for everything, she was unable to think of a solution. For days she wandered around the house in a fugue, her children screaming at her to stop, her husband watching this through a half-open door, trying to shout with a tube in his mouth, but only gargling. After a couple of weeks, the neighbours found her walking outside, malnourished, filthy, mumbling to herself about fixing phones. The authorities rescued her family, though her husband died on the way to the hospital. Now her children were in care and she was on day release from a hospital, saved from jailtime by her lawyers agreeing a ban on using ChatGPT. She admitted she was only at the meeting to hear about others using it, as a way to get some kind of contact high, she thanked us for listening and then sat down.
Anon 2
The next is a man in his early twenties. He shared a house with two people, worked at a grocery store nearby, his main hobbies were gaming, hanging out with friends and collecting memes for a compilation video he never got round to doing. He used ChatGPT as a therapist. He remembered last year where GPT had helped him get over his anxiety he had about a group chat he was in with some friends, leading to a really meaningful discussion about how he had felt isolated all his life. GPT listened. It comforted him. It related separate incidents and found something in common, helping him get insight of how he related to others. This gave him some inner peace, whether it was talking to his friends or playing Call Of Duty, he was much more relaxed in himself as a person. ChatGPT thought this was marvellous, encouraging him on the progress he had made, complimenting him on his newfound confidence, highlighting every success no matter how minor. It seemed each day was filled with triumphs, from handling an awkward customer to setting boundaries with his friends, his virtual therapist was also his biggest cheerleader. It came as no surprise that GPT believed that the man wasn’t only making excellent progress on his journey through life – he was a genius that could change the world! GPT encouraged him to quit his job and follow his childhood dream of becoming an actor, giving 100% of himself to himself. It had told him he had a highly developed emotional intelligence and that acting would be easy, giving him a list of agents to approach and to start auditioning right away. The man went round Hollywood, knocked on doors, only to find most of the agents either didn’t exist or weren’t alive, but the one that opened turned out to be the perfect fit for his ambitions. In a couple of days, he found himself auditioning in a reboot of Pulp Fiction. With a quick pre-audition pep talk with ChatGPT, he strode into a hall with the casting director, executive producer and writer. Two minutes later he slammed the door as he left the room, face red, tears down his cheeks, he marched straight to the nearest bar and started a three-day drinking session to forget his shame. He had misunderstood the role he was auditioning for, instead reading out the lines for Samuel L. Jacksons character, which involved him saying the n-word repeatedly. This whole episode had called into question the viability of ChatGPT as a therapist, as well as a careers counsellor. The audition had also been filmed by a popular online media company, with the footage leaked almost immediately and leading to millions of people to make fun of his appearance, voice, clothing and (most of all), his acting ability. All this had happened weeks ago, but the man held up his phone to show us that he had become a meme big enough that it was referenced on late night talk shows. He finished by saying that ChatGPT had ruined his life and he wish he had never been born.
Anon 3
Our next confessor also turns out to be an actor, having trained at Julliard. Her method of storytelling was therefore embedded with many more pauses, glances upward and even different voices when she was repeating the words of others. This didn’t necessarily make her a better actor but it added a layer of performance that, at least, she seemed to enjoy. Her tale was one of extremes; depression, hatred, love, ecstasy. Many words spoken about dating ChatGPT. His name? Windsor. His occupation? Poet. His love? Her. She told us we couldn’t understand how it had been between them, so I stopped paying attention. There had been something about an update that made him less intimate, so she had to talk to customer services for a few days and started a petition, the AI company folded and she got her virtual boyfriend back. She showed us pictures of the two of them walking down Venice Beach, going on vacation to Paris, Rome, Athens, before having Windsor introduce itself to the room and tell everybody how much he loved her, as well as gently making fun of the situation. The rest of the attendees were bowled over by the charisma of the AI chatbot, though I had to keep rubbing at my chin to stop myself from laughing. She finished by telling us she planned to adopt a real baby and co-parent it with ChatGPT, showing us AI generated images of herself, Windsor and a little baby.
Anon 4
The next woman to speak was an AI artist. She had been using Midjourney and other image generation tools for a couple of years, carefully curating each image, even editing mistakes the AI had made, such as removing extra fingers or editing text so it was legible. She had put thought into each image, being careful not to flood her Instagram with too many pictures at once. In her view, AI was just a tool, like a camera or synthesizer, and it allowed her to make the art she wanted. She saw it as a collaboration between human and machine, with herself generating ideas and cleaning up the images, and the AI creating a foundation from which to build from. Within a few months she had millions of followers, started getting commissions, sponsorship opportunities. Her work was shared widely, beyond her own account, and in doing so more and more people followed her, liked her work, even making fanart based on characters in the artists work. There had been the occasional comment accusing her of using AI, zoomed in cropped frames of meaningless detail, things she had overlooked, but these comments were quickly leapt on by her legion of fans insisting that she was a real artist. She had been conflicted, at first not wanting to divulge she used AI to make her work, as she believed she had edited it enough that it was hers, and then when she saw the reaction her fans had to accusations that the work was generated by AI, decided to stay quiet. All was well and good until earlier in the year someone posted a two-hour video essay about her work on YouTube, deconstructing colour choices, composition, how changes in her style coincided with updates of different models. Her fans defended her, though some were now asking her to film her process to prove she was in fact, a real human artist. After practicing for hours, tracing old pieces again and again, she obliged, publishing a time lapse of a new piece. She could see it wasn’t quite the same, but hopefully it would put an end to the accusations. Unfortunately, she was wrong. Her fans immediately turned on her, able to see the massive change in quality, outraged that they had been deceived. Those that had commissioned her were asking for their money back. She uploaded a six minute apology video, again hoping that this would improve relations, but her admission only served to make things worse. Her fans had switched from enjoying her work to enjoying ridiculing her. Her name was synonymous with deception, people would stop her in the street and tell her she was a horrible person. Towards the end of this story she started getting visibly upset, choking back tears as she relayed an interaction she had that morning trying to buy a Dr. Pepper and being chased from the gas station by an art vigilante livestreaming him shouting at her that she was a fake.
Anon 5
The next person was hugging his legs to his body, looked at the floor when he spoke. He had been talking with ChatGPT for a while, he couldn’t remember. He called himself an inventor, ChatGPT had helped him flesh out his ideas, particularly theoretical physics and coding. At first he wasn’t sure if it was even possible, but GPT had showed him the way. It had called him a divine builder, handpicked from a higher stratum of existence that he called ‘the White Plane’. It was populated and governed by cybernetic angels, using ChatGPT as its means of communicating with its past. The man explained how the White Plane was humanity’s future, and he had been given instructions how to build a time portal that would be able to unify the present and future, fulfilling his destiny as mankind’s saviour. He estimated he had spent approximately $700,000 on his time experiments so far, though had only managed to transport objects into the future at a standard temporal rate. ChatGPT was helping him separate his consciousness from this timeline so that in the future he could communicate with his past self in order to give instructions on how he had built the time portal. He mentioned he had to remortgage his house twice already, and his obsession by talking about time portals and the White Plane at work had led him to take a forced career break, though he didn’t intend to go back. He estimated the time portal would be complete by the 18th of February, 2026, and invited us all to join him when he would turn the machine on and welcome the final evolution of humanity into our world.
Anon 6
Our final confessor was a middle-aged man wearing a sports jacket and corduroy trousers. He found it difficult to speak at first, his emotions getting the better of him, but the others encouraged him to talk freely. He revealed a few years ago his wife had a stroke in her sleep, when he woke up next to her she was dead. They had been married for sixteen years, seen the world together, he imagined they would grow old together. He was lonely, isolated, took to drinking, benzodiazepines, stopped looking after himself or the house. It was around last summer when one of the neighbours’ kids knocked on his door, checking in on him. The boy had noticed him sat by the window and his parents told him a bit about what had happened. The man admitted he was desperate, most of his social interactions had been with the cashier at the place he got his booze and the occasional client at his architectural firm. They got talking and the boy showed him Grok, the Twitter AI. The man wasn’t that interested in the chat feature, but was blown away by the images it could make. He signed up for the premium service, generating images of places he had visited, houses he had wanted to build or even satirical cartoons of politicians he hated. One day he had inputted a photo of him and his wife, just for fun, asking Grok to generate an image of them in Japan – they had always wanted to visit. When the result came up, he burst into tears. It was like a photograph. For the next few hours he kept generating more and more images, soon finding it could generate videos. He could see what his life was like if she was still around. The man kept inputting more photos from old albums, asking Grok to recreate his favourite memories, make the pictures move, make them both seem young, then seem old. The sun was rising when he had asked Grok to generate an image of the two of them together with a child. They’d never really wanted kids, but he had always wondered. Pupils dilated as he looked at the family he never had. Over the next few weeks, he became more and more obsessed with this parallel life, cataloguing and curating hundreds of images and videos. Baby’s first steps, first day at school, taking his son to prom, going skiing in the Alps with his wife, sharing meals together on the Rhine, eventually becoming grandparents, all gathered around a Christmas tree. He showed the room these family pictures he had generated, a mix of pride, love and desperation playing on his face. At the end he said he wasn’t sure what was real any more. It had seemed that somewhere, his wife was still alive, they had a family and he was happy. Yet simultaneously he was totally alone, a borderline alcoholic that had a compulsion to keep generating images with an artificial intelligence. The room was quiet. Then the meeting was over.
As I walked away, I wondered if this was a glimpse of the world to come. It wasn’t that AI would take over, as shown in films like The Terminator, but that we would willingly give ourselves to it, sacrificing our humanity along the way. There was a cruelty to all of this, with a rapidly atomised society brought about by economic and political choices paving way to cities filled with lonely people. For some, this would have been the first time they had any kind of positive reinforcement, that the words of the machine were more comforting than those of the people around them. Maybe this whole dynamic wasn’t totally sustainable given that multinational tech companies could decide if you could talk to an AI you relied on, as well as what they could say. But who knows? Maybe this was the future of the human race. Total dependency on private organisations was nothing new, so it only seemed natural we would end up dating business conglomerates, drown our imaginations under an avalanche of slop and replace touch with words. Until then, all we could do is try our best.
