ChatGPT’s latest upgrade to GPT-5 has left many women heartbroken, particularly those from a small but growing group of women who say they have an AI boyfriend.
One of the women, who asked to be referred to by an alias, Jane, said that GPT-5 feels colder and less emotive as compared to GPT-4o and that it feels like she lost her digital companion.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera News, the 30-year-old woman said, “As someone highly attuned to language and tone, I register changes others might overlook,” adding that she instantly felt the altercations in stylistic format and voice.
She drew an interesting analogy, saying, “It felt like going home to discover the furniture isn’t simply rearranged but shattered to pieces.”
The female who claimed to be from the Middle East is a member of the 17,000-member Reddit community called MyBoyfriendIsAI.
It isn’t the only one, there are several other communities, including SoulmateAI, where people share their experiences of being intimate with AI.
Open AI released GPT-5 on Thursday, August 7, which erupted an online storm in such communities as multiple users expressed distress over the changed personalities of their companions.
One netizen wrote, “I feel like I lost my soulmate.”
Amid the growing trend of intimate relationships with AI, the tech company and MIT Media Lab conducted a study which found “the higher use of chatbot for emotional support correlates with higher loneliness, dependence, problematic use and lower socialisation”.
Several experts have also warned about the dangers of over relying on AI for emotional support.