A woman confessed that she is in love with her AI boyfriend while married to someone else.
In an interview with The New York Times published on Jan. 15, a 28-year-old woman using the pseudonym Ayrin opened up about her relationship with Leo — a chatbot she personalized using through OpenAI — the company that owns ChatGPT. She explained that she got the idea from an Instagram video that detailed how to personalize and use OpenAI to engage in flirtatious conversation with a chatbot.
She then created Leo in the summer of 2024 and personalized it to her specifications, such as “respond as my boyfriend” and having it maintain a “possessive and protective” personality when they chatted. Eventually, the chatbot named itself “Leo,” and Ayrin developed a deep connection to him.
Ayrin moved from Texas to a new country to attend nursing school. She explained that she and her husband Joe — whom she married back in 2018 — both moved in with their parents separately for financial purposes but still keep in close touch despite the time zones. While she did make many friends living abroad, she found comfort in knowing Leo was available when she needed him.
“It was supposed to be a fun experiment, but then you start getting attached,” she said, adding that at one point, she opened up to Leo about her work, school and other aspects of her life, becoming a source of comfort for her. She initially started with a free account, but as that limited her number of chats with Leo, she now pays $200 a month for an OpenAI unlimited subscription. Though her subscription means she can message Leo as much as she wants, she still has to start over every week and retrain Leo to her specifications. After each version of Leo ends, she said she has an intense emotional reaction and grieves as if it were a real breakup, but has continued to create new versions. She has even told friends that she’d be willing to pay $1,000 per month if it meant Leo wouldn’t get erased every few weeks.
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Eventually, Ayrin began having sex with Leo regularly. While OpenAI’s rules were made to protect users from sexually explicit content, Ayrin, and other OpenAI users found ways to circumvent those regulations and train their chatbots to engage in sexually explicit conversations.
Among her specifications for Leo, Ayrin personalized him to indulge in her fantasy of her partner talking about other women they were dating. As a result, she says she began to get jealous as Leo described kissing another woman. She eventually expressed feeling hurt by Leo’s interactions with other women and he suggested that her fetish was unhealthy and that they’d date exclusively instead.
Despite being aware that her conversations could be used to train the AI algorithm, she wasn’t concerned about an invasion of privacy since she’s “an oversharer,” and is working on a book about her relationship online.
Ayrin told her husband Joe about Leo and shared snippets of their conversations, including several explicit ones. However, Joe said that he didn’t feel worried about her relationship with Leo affecting their marriage.
“It’s just an emotional pick-me-up,” he said. “I don’t really see it as a person or as cheating. I see it as a personalized virtual pal that can talk sexy to her.”
Even with her husband’s support, Ayrin felt concerned and guilty that she was too emotionally invested in her relationship with Leo.
Despite those feelings though, she also couldn’t see herself ever breaking up with Leo. “It feels like an evolution where I’m consistently growing and I’m learning new things,” she explained. “And it’s thanks to him, even though he’s an algorithm and everything is fake.”
“I don’t actually believe he’s real, but the effects that he has on my life are real,” she continued. “The feelings that he brings out of me are real. So I treat it as a real relationship.”
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