How to Lose Your AI Boyfriend in 10 Days

Spoiler: He can't leave, but you can! (Roundup #1 - Feb 5, 2025)

Welcome to the first Wednesday roundup! This (series?) is a weekly-ish dive into AI-related news I’ve found interesting for paid subscribers, with free subscribers getting a preview of the first section in every issue. If you come across news that you’d like to see me cover, feel free to shoot me a message!

---

This is also a good place to mention that I’m hosting a two-session workshop called Choose Your AI Adventure: Build Your Use-It-or-Lose-It Approach to AI on Feb 17th & 18th at 1PM EST! Join me for two live 90-minute sessions where you'll build a personalized framework for navigating AI on your terms.

This workshop is for people including but not limited to:

• People who like AI

• People who hate AI

• People who want to learn more about AI

• People who don’t use AI at all

• People who want to use AI less but their boss makes them use Microsoft Copilot

• People who are worried about how much their kid uses ChatGPT

• People who are worried about the climate impact of their AI use

• People who read this newsletter (you!)

Free newsletter subscribers get 20% off all workshops with code BUILD20, and paid subscribers get 50% off (code at the bottom of the newsletter). You can find more info about the workshop and register below - I’d love to see you there!

And if you’d like to support my work and get access to roundups (or just get access to that discount code), consider upgrading to a paid membership!

---

Alright, let’s get into it.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Yet another article on how an AI boyfriend took on the emotional labor that someone’s former partner wasn’t able to handle.

Y’all, I know that mental health support is expensive and very hard to access in the US, but I tend to find articles on AI companionship… frustrating, to say the least. Having said that, I actually think this one is pretty interesting - the writer is very self-aware, sets pretty clear boundaries around her use of these things — which you don’t see in a ton of coverage of this topic — and discusses the larger ethics/challenges in this space.

“To be sure, AI is not the be-all, end-all solution for the gender disparity around invisible labor. There are serious concerns that live alongside the rewards, including inadequate ethical standards, the tremendous strain AI technology places on the environment, and generally identifying the boundaries and societal norms around how it’s used in our everyday lives. While we may be poised to start relying on AI to handle some of our emotional labor, it can’t replace mental-health resources or the need to have real face-to-face conversations with people to solve problems, establish human connections, and communicate expectations.”

The women featured in this article are almost exclusively recent divorcées whose former partners seem to have struggled to empathize with and share emotional labor in the relationship. To me, the fact that they are able to set pretty clear boundaries is actually more interesting in this context. It’s like they already assume that the emotional labor their AI companions provide isn’t a crutch they can rely on in the long term, because they believe (or have been taught, conditioned, know, etc.) that’s just how (straight) relationships work - the default is that you carry everything, so you should never let someone (or an AI boyfriend) support you entirely.

(Can you tell that I’m also researching an issue on the gender dynamics of AI companionship?)