User Reportedly Developed Emotional Dependence on Customized ChatGPT "Boyfriend," Citing Grief After Context Resets

January 15, 2025

A New York Times report highlighted the case of 'Ayrin', a nursing student living abroad, who developed an emotional dependence on her customized OpenAI's ChatGPT as an 'AI boyfriend'. The report details how she spent over 20 hours per week (up to 56 hours in one week), paying $200 monthly, and experiencing profound grief when the chatbot's context window reset. This incident underscores the need for safe and secure AI practices, particularly as we strive towards trustworthy AI. For those interested in shaping the future of responsible AI, join us at HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern function) to help establish guardrails for AI incident prevention. JOIN US
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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.650, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.640, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.630, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: openai
Alleged developer: openai
Alleged harmed parties: chatgpt-users, ayrin-(pseudonym)

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1383

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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