You can’t navigate the internet these days without hearing all of the ways that AI is changing our world – some for the better, others for the worse.

I’m not sure whether this qualifies as good or bad, but people creating AI clones of their exes definitely strikes me as creepy.

Apparently, if you’re still hung up after a breakup, you can use your correspondence from your ex, plug it into a large language model AI, and basically keep the status quo.

There’s currently an AI-powered app called Talk to Your Ex waiting for approval that lets people do exactly this, and people are also using AI to emulate their exes on social media.

One Redditor confessed to checking it out:

“My ex and I broke up after she had to move to another country for a job. I found out about this character creator AI chatbot platform called Yodayo through friends, and, at first, I was not interested. Then, with the many lonely nights I find myself in, I tried it out. I used their image generator and made an AI image of someone that sort of resembles her.”

It didn’t take him long to realize something didn’t feel quite right.

“I don’t know how long I can play with this AI ex bot. I know I am lying to myself, but do you think I should text my ex? I really miss her.”

Experts like psychologist and relationship expert Marisa T. Cohen warn that using things like this aren’t healthy, though.

“People may be using AI as a replacement for their ex with the expectations that it will provide them with closure, failing to accept the relationship has ended.”

It’s because most of us have a deep-seated need to understand the why of being left behind.

“After a relationship has ended, many people search for closure, which is basically just a way to explain the ‘why’ behind the breakup. We yearn to make sense of the relationship so that we can understand and move past the pain. Essentially, we are trying to get past the negative and painful emotions. Healing doesn’t quite work that way.”

Some users, though, like 38-year-old Jake, says he used ChatGPT to help him get over his ex and move on – because he programmed it with “the worst parts of my ex.”

“Shockingly, this ChatGPT version of him would very accurately explain some of the reasons he was so mean to me. It was then I realized our relationship had ended. I was probably the last person on Earth to see it anyway.”

Cohen concedes that using AI in this way might not be the worst thing.

“If the conversation enables you to better understand aspects of your relationship which you may not have fully processed, it may be able to provide you with clarity about how and why it ended. AI isn’t inherently good or bad, but if a person is using technology instead of interacting with others in their environment it becomes problematic.”

After all, sitting with your emotions, letting them play out, is the only way to truly heal – you can’t skip that part.

And honestly, while AI isn’t good or bad at its core, OpenAI and other chatbots have usage policies that forbid s–ual imagery, profanity, and most NSFW behavior to begin with – so it shouldn’t even comply with those requests.

That said, I think we’ve all read/seen enough science fiction by now to know that there are people out there smart enough to get AI to do what they want.

The question isn’t if they can, but if they should.

Some people really struggle with knowing the difference.

If you enjoyed that story, check out what happened when a guy gave ChatGPT $100 to make as money as possible, and it turned out exactly how you would expect.