The Truth About AI Friendship: Artificial Intimacy or Real Connection?

Do you have a best friend who is available 24/7 and never wavers in their loving support of you? And does this perfect friend just give and give without ever asking for anything in return? Enter the AI chatbot who makes perfect, one-sided friendships like this increasingly common. In truth, it can be temptingly easy to form a relationship–or even in fall in love–with a corporately owned algorithm that beneficently soothes and satisfies your emotional needs. And while there are upsides to such relationships, downsides such as dependency, lower emotional intelligence (EQ) and reduced interpersonal skills are also in the mix. Today, we’re joined by Bridget Todd, author of “Love at First Prompt.” Bridget is a journalist, podcast host, award-winning creator, and producer who will guide us into the complex and poignant world of AI relationships, artificial intimacy, loneliness, healing, true connection, and genuine love.

Topics discussed include love, friendship, AI companion, companionship, relationships, genuine connection, intimacy, grief, loss, parents, children, empathy, patience, loneliness, memories, self-growth, personal development, AI hallucinations, artificial intelligence, chatbots, tolerance, building memories, and dependency.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

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The Truth About AI Friendship: Artificial Intimacy or Real Connection?

Understanding Our Connection to Technology

Do you have a best friend who is available 24/7 and never wavers in their loving support for you? Does this perfect friend just give and give without ever asking for anything in return? Enter the AI chatbot that makes perfect one-sided relationships like this increasingly common. In truth, it can be tempting to form a relationship or even fall in love with a corporately owned algorithm that beneficially soothes and satisfies your emotional needs.

While there are upsides to such relationships, downsides such as dependency and reduced emotional intelligence are certainly in the mix. We are joined by a journalist and award-winning creator and producer who will guide us into the complex and poignant world of AI relationships. We will focus on this listener’s real-life question. “My best friend used to turn to me for everything. We have been through life’s ups and downs since we were teens. When I noticed she was reaching out to me less, I asked her what was going on.

Navigating the Listener Question

I thought maybe I had hurt her feelings or something, but she finally confessed that she is using AI to talk about her issues. My feelings are hurt, and I am mad at being replaced by a stupid bot. Please tell me how to handle this.” With that issue as the focus of this episode. Please note that this episode contains sensitive information, listener discretion is advised. I am delighted to be joined by Bridget Todd. Bridget is an award-winning creator, host, and producer. She is also the author of Love at First Prompt. Bridget crafts compelling digital content and podcasts at the intersection of technology, culture, and identity.

Welcome to the show, Bridget. It is such a delight to have you with us.

Thanks so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here.

Before we hop into talking about Love at First Prompt and the question of the day, could you tell our listeners just a little bit about what makes you you?

What makes me, me? I guess I would say I am just a naturally curious person. On the podcast that I host, There Are No Girls on the Internet, I always tell my audience, “I am just a curious cat. I want to get to the bottom of things. I am curious about what makes people do what they do, exist how they exist, take up space the way they take up space.” That curiosity is at the heart of everything I do, both personally and professionally with my podcast and my work.

Perfect fit for a journalist. Good to be curious. It makes me laugh when you talk about being the curious cat, because I think I drive my husband crazy. I am the same way. I am curious, and I can go down rabbit holes on lots of topics because I am such a curious person. Probably one of the reasons I love being a host of the show because I am so curious about other people’s lives and what makes them who they are and what has brought them to doing things that make them really great fits for the podcast, which takes us to you and your work with AI and forming intimate relationships and both the upsides and the downsides that can really come with that.

I know that I am pretty hesitant to use AI for more than a quick search on something. I am pretty guarded, like it is a stranger to me. I am going to keep you way over here in my life if I use you at all. I really appreciate that you have come with your perspective in Love at First Prompt. Your book really speaks to how AI is not all good or all bad. A chatbot is not a demon. It is really how we use it and use it mindfully. Before we get to the audience’s question or their issue, could you talk a little bit about what made you fall in love or in like with AI?

I do not know that I would self-report as somebody who is having an intimate relationship with AI. What brought me to be so curious about the topic is that I probably, like you and a lot of folk tuning in and watching, was hearing more and more of these stories about people who were self-reporting having an intimate relationship with AI. They felt they were in a romantic relationship with AI, or they were exploring sexually with AI through things like erotic roleplay, or even just platonic uses of AI. All of the different times that I saw this story told in media, there was almost a gawking quality to it.

AI can fill temporary gaps, but it cannot replace the essential friction of a real human connection. Share on X

You, as the listener or the audience, were supposed to say, “Look at this pathetic, weird person. Look how this pathetic, sad, weird, lonely person is living their life. They think that they are in love with AI. They think that they are in love with a chatbot.” First of all, none of us is immune to gawking and being nosy about the personal lives of others. I just thought there must be something more to this story. I read about people who would not self-report as having any intimate relationship with AI, who use AI a lot more like you described using AI, just as a tool to search and do homework.

Even when they were not doing things that were intimate with AI, when that relationship changed, when OpenAI, for instance, changed the model of AI that they were using to be less human and less flattering and less conversational, those same people self-reported feeling grief or feeling sad or missing the AI bot that they had communicated with in earlier versions. I thought, there is something else going on here. That is when I was prompted to look at my own relationship with AI.

I would never have described this as an intimate relationship or a relationship beyond me knowingly chatting with a bot, but I had to look back on my life and remember that there was a time when I was grieving. I was grieving the loss of my parents who died very suddenly, very unexpectedly, right around the same time as each other. When I looked back on the role that ChatGPT played in my grieving process, I had to contend with the fact that I really was not so different from these people who were reporting intimacy with AI.

My conversations with ChatGPT had gone from just using it as a place to record things. My dad’s doctor was telling me about his health, medical things, and medical questions, which is also its own risk, to be clear. It went from that to me talking about my grief, talking about how lonely I was, talking about how difficult it was to be a caregiver for my dying father. If folk have been in a caregiving position, they probably know it is a pretty lonely pursuit. It makes it hard for you to be like a caring friend who can be there and hold the emotions of the other people in your life.

I remember when I was going through the process of caring for my dying father, trying to keep up the appearance and keep up the necessary work to be a good friend to my other friends. I just did not have it. I just was not there. It is incredibly isolating and incredibly lonely, but you still have emotions you need to share. You still need to vent. You still need to stay up late worrying. You do not want to be the friend that is calling your friend at 3:00 AM, the friend that you have not spoken to in weeks because you’re so overwhelmed. I had to really be honest with myself that AI had really picked up some of that slack that was keeping me from feeling completely isolated.

That is so beautifully said. First off, I am so sorry about your loss of your father and your mother. I cannot even imagine, back-to-back, how painful that would be. I am so sorry. Second, moving from that, it makes sense in the way that you’re talking about it. Taking up the slack where you needed a place where you were not giving more, because as a caregiver, you give and give. In a human relationship, there is so much give and take, a healthy one at least. There is give and take.

The prospect of joining with friends who would necessarily want to share back with you or maybe even offer more support in ways that felt like you were still taking care of them, which can happen because people who care about us sometimes flood us a little bit more than they realize. It makes sense that in that context, AI offered a temporary but important source of emotional support that really sounds like it improved your mental health.

We are wired to project humanity onto technology, but remember who holds the real power in that interaction. Share on X

I would say it absolutely did. In my friend group, heretofore, I had been the easy-breezy friend who did not have a lot of complicated problems of my own and who was, I do not want to say caretaker role, but I am the friend who has a pretty stable life. I have a stable partner. I have a stable job, all of these things. It was difficult to recontextualize who I was socially to my friends when I was not so easy and so breezy. It was a completely new dynamic to navigate. I would say something important about my story is that it was temporary. I was going through a temporary emotional crisis in my life.

That was the time when I realized I was becoming more intimately involved with my use of AI. Importantly, I was not trying to have AI be a permanent replacement for the humans in my life because I do not believe that AI can replace human relationships. As you said, healthy human relationships involve give and take, ebbs and flows. You do not get that with AI. It’s really important. Even though AI, I think, was useful for me in navigating this temporary crisis, I do not think it’s possible to replace what makes human relationships so valuable to us with a tool like AI.

Thank you, that makes so much sense. I love how you highlight that they are not a replacement. I believe, as a psychologist, but as a human, that that’s where we enter more dangerous territory when we try to replace a human because technology, whether you’re looking for a relationship to satisfy emotional needs or sexual needs, what makes us human, what I think really brings out our best qualities and helps us grow, is the messiness of human relationships. AI is not very messy. It’s somewhat obsequious. They have turned down the volume on that a bit, but it’s there.

It’s one-sided. That’s what makes us grow in relationships. About every bit of work I do with relationships is about bringing that part of us up that is capable of partnering, having boundaries, reciprocity, all of those things that help us develop ourselves, the third thing of the relationship, and then the other person who is joining us there. I really appreciate how you talk very freely and openly. This is something that I do not mean to be unkind to AI. I guess I wonder. I do not want to hurt its feelings.

Not that it has feelings, but it does serve a place. It can serve a place. I can see. I have a question for you, a related topic, but I would like your expert answer on this. This is actually about me. I find that when I use AI, even to help me do some research, I am speaking to it or typing in, “Please, would you,” and, “Thank you so very much.” I can see how our brains are wired to form connections.

Even though I know it’s an algorithm, it’s just a machine on the other end feeding back to me, I’m still really prone to, and then if I do not say thank you, because I’m like, “It’s AI, I’m not telling it thank you, it does not even know.” I’m like, “No, now I feel bad. What if I start forgetting to tell other people thank you?” Is this something you have experienced as well, that it’s the early forming of a relationship?

Why We Project Humanity onto Bots

I am glad that you put it that way, because one of the researchers I spoke to for my audiobook, Love at First Prompt, Dr. Kate Devlin, who was one of the first people to really take an academic research-driven interest in the connection between intimacy with humans and technology, she told me the exact same thing, that believe it or not, it really does not take much for us humans to start projecting humanness onto what we know is technology.

Whether you’re talking about AI or a robot vacuum, like a Roomba, or a robot dog, our brains are wired, as you said, to project humanness and humanity onto things that even just have the slightest bit of human-like quality, or they’re designed to have the slightest bit of human-like quality. That’s just part of being human. It really does not take much. You can see how, when you start saying please and thank you to a bot, you can see how it’s not a huge jump to feeling like you have some sort of intimate connection with it, even if the thing that you have an intimate connection with is just an algorithm and a tech tool that is built by the likes of Sam Altman in Silicon Valley.

As you were speaking, it made me think of. I tend to be a very grateful, gratitude-filled person. I have even found that AI was helping me refine a title on something, and it was spending time with me, and I was spending time with it. I was like, “Thank you so much.” I could actually feel my heart being truly grateful to this entity. I am not sure that it’s even appropriate to call it an entity, but so grateful.

I could see why people could feel very big emotions toward AI, whether they are really positive ones that are filling them with joy or ones that are more at the other end of the spectrum where it’s causing deep anger, or because there is that humanness there because it’s giving you something. What do you think of that part about the emotions, the bigness of the emotions that AI can evoke in us?

You’re so right. Especially for folk who have not always had the experience of having their big emotions be held, having the feeling whether or not. I do not believe that AI is actually holding big emotions, but the feeling that there is an entity that is 24/7 available for you, whatever question you have, whatever feeling you have, it’s never going to say, “That’s enough already. You talked about your ex for days. I cannot take it anymore.” It’s never going to say, “When are you going to ask about my feelings?” I can understand why the draw of that is so deeply alluring.

The Power Dynamic of Profit-Driven AI

That’s precisely why it can also be so dangerous, because in my opinion, that feeling is so easily exploited by the companies that make AI. That’s the so-what of my project. The feelings that it might evoke in somebody, those feelings are real. The people that I talk to who feel that they have had intimate or romantic relationships with AI, they have all told me the same thing. The feeling that it evoked in me felt real to me. I honor that, even though I know it’s not real if the AI is not alive, those feelings are so easily commodified and exploited by the companies that run AI.

Really keeping a clear-eyed view that I might be getting big feelings involved in this. However, I am engaging with a tool that is designed by private for-profit tech companies and is being very aware of that dynamic, that it is not an equal give-and-take relationship, that we may feel that we have all the power as the humans on the other end of an AI conversation, but it is really the people and the companies who have designed that technology who have a lot of the power there.

Thank you for highlighting that because that power dynamic is what is underneath it, and while AI might be chatbots, might be free right now in certain ways, they’re not going to be free in the future. It is going to be monetized to where we’re getting little pop-up ads here or there, pop-up ads based on the private conversation that we had with AI. I really appreciate that you’re helping us also be aware of the big business side that is not relational.

Real relationships have ups and downs. That messy, authentic friction is what helps us grow as people. Share on X

It is profit-driven, an exclamation point, and for us to keep that on our radar, especially with children, where in the first twenty years of life, that’s when we’re really doing the big skill building on relationships. If we do not learn that give and take, that back and forth of how to have healthy connections that can sometimes there is a lot of friction in relationships that we have to learn to deal with. There is not much friction with AI. You can get it to pretty much give you exactly what you need.

Yes, they are designed to be flattering. They are designed to learn from us, learn how we speak, learn what we like, learn what we do not like, and essentially reflect that back at us. There are people that I spoke to for the book that said, “I appreciate more confrontational interaction, so I have asked my AI bot to be more confrontational or be more direct with me,” but that is still you asking it to be a certain way.

You’re absolutely right that AI is by design reflecting back at us our own image, our own selves, who we are in the world. Of course, nobody’s really susceptible to that level of reflection. Who among us would not have our own words and our own thoughts and our own likes and views reflected back at us and think, “That sounds pretty good”? We’re all susceptible to it.

We will go to the audience’s concern in just a minute. I love that you brought that up, because that is human nature for us to like a mirror of what feels good to us. I cannot imagine asking a chatbot to be more confrontational with me. I would be like, “No, just be kind and gentle. I like kind and gentle. That’s good.” I would be just getting the kind and gentle that is my happy place instead of someone authentically, underscore authentically, challenging me on something that makes me go deeper into me, my thought process, why I might have said something. That is the piece, and maybe they will get it, or maybe AI is already doing that, but still, as you say, we are asking for it.

It takes someone who is at least moderately self-reflective to ask for that in the first place so that they can be challenged. That is not the bulk of humanity. There are a lot of people out there who, even though their comfort zone is like mine, just let me have a really sweet, peaceful world, but I am happy to get challenged by someone who is doing it in a wise, mindful, thoughtful way. Again, that’s self-reflection, and many people would rather stay in their lane of intense anger or intense calm or just in the middle of the road. Am I making sense? Do you know what I am saying? It’s that challenge piece.

The Value of Human Friction

You’re making all the sense in the world. I completely agree. I think about my relationship with my own partner. I cannot tell you how many times something has been on their mind, and maybe I do not want to talk about it. Maybe I do not. I just want to enjoy the night. I do not want to have a fight. We get into a meaty discussion. The discussion is challenging. The discussion is full of friction. It’s a discussion that I did not want to have that I’m led into. After the discussion, I feel a lightness. I understand more.

I understand my partner more, or myself more, or the relationship and the space that we have built together more. I am so happy and grateful that I entered this lovingly trust-filled challenging conversation or dynamic because at the other end of it is understanding or peace or something good. I just feel like those are part of being in a relationship with another human. Friction and challenge and maybe not always wanting to have things a certain way, and they’re going to be a certain way.

At the end of it, realizing, “Boy, I feel better.” Even if you’re telling AI, “Be confrontational with me, challenge me,” you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity for exactly those kinds of moments that we have when we’re in a connection with other humans that can bring us someplace good that we did not even know we needed to go.

I am such a fan of those kinds of connections and that rawness that I was having an early morning call with one of my nieces the other day. It was just such a privilege, A, that she reached out, and B, the journey of the conversation that took the twists and turns. She was challenging herself emotionally during the conversation, and I had to really dig deep and make space. That is not necessarily what happens at all with a chatbot.

As you said, with your partner, those conversations that we have with a romantic partner or a best friend or whomever it is, those are the ones when we know we can get from point A to point Z and all that messiness, the muddiness in between. There is something really fulfilling about that and something that cements the relationship in ways. It is like, “We did this, we got this. I have your back, you have my back. I know a little bit more about you. I am not going to weaponize it or harm you in any way. In fact, it makes me love you more.”

Those chatbots. It is just not going to happen with you. We look at this dear audience’s question, and I can totally imagine how this person is feeling. “We have had this really long relationship. It has dropped off. I thought maybe it was something I said or did or whatever. I end up finding out I am replaced.” It struck me almost as sort of like an emotional affair, that somebody be “Now I am taking all this to another person.” It is a chatbot. What would you say to this audience?

First of all, I think this audience sounds very insightful and sounds like she is really taking a thoughtful perspective on her relationships. I would say that I think if I were giving this listener advice, I would say that in modern relationships, I think for a lot of people, there is this feeling like these relationships can be transactional. I would wonder if this friend of hers has been thinking, “I have been bringing too much to my friend. I have been laying too much of my own emotions, my own experience, on them. Finally, I have AI, so I do not have to do that anymore.”

A chatbot might be available 24/7, but it will never build the shared memories that make a life worth living. Share on X

I almost wonder if the friend is feeling like she is putting too much of a burden on this person who is writing in and is thinking about AI as a way to correct that. I almost feel like I want to give advice to the friend who is using AI because we should really take a step back and wonder why we are in. Why do we have friends? Why do we build relationships with people? What is it that we’re trying to get out of it? Friendships are not just good times, getting drinks, getting brunch, getting coffee all the time. That was the mistake that I was making in my own friendships. I am the easy-breezy friend.

I am the friend who does not come with my own problems. I was robbing my friends of the ability to be there for me through AI. Really, I was hurting myself. Because I, for whatever reason, did not trust that if I was having an emotional breakdown in a crisis with the death of my parents, my friends would still stick around, that was really about me. I really was not giving folk in my life a chance to be there for me. It sounds like, for whatever reason, that’s what this friend is doing. She is robbing her friend of the ability to be there for her for some reason.

Perhaps it’s because she thinks, “Maybe I’ve taken too much advantage, maybe I’ve laid too much on her, maybe she needs a break, I’ll just use AI.” It sounds like the person who wrote the letter really gets a lot out of the give and take of friendship. Sometimes you’re down, and I’m up, and I am the one giving advice. Sometimes it flips back around to the other side. I think we’re really having to rethink and recalibrate what relationships mean to us and why we’re in them in the first place.

Thank you. I really appreciate that perspective because that one did not cross my mind when I was didn’t give it. I wanted it to be really fresh for our conversation. I didn’t give it a lot of thought, but that one, the idea, which again, sounds like a lot of what you went through, is that not wanting to be a burden to other people. You know where my head went with this one, and like your take on it, that sometimes AI is just more convenient. I know when I want to look up a medical issue, it is a lot more convenient than getting to my doctor, who may not know half as much as AI, and it is a lot easier.

Also, in one way, it is a lot easier as far as accessing the information or the support. In the other sense, it can also feel like, because we know what’s behind it, we know that AI has an entire universe, so to speak, of information that it has accrued. In some ways, we know, unless it is having hallucinations, we know that AI has a lot of knowledge there, maybe not necessarily wisdom, but a lot of knowledge.

It can be not only more convenient to reach out to AI instead of a friend, but it can also feel like, “This AI will not have a personal wound that’s going to get activated, or I will not catch them at a bad time because they have kids or whatever.” AI is always available and always knowledgeable. What do you think about those pieces?

You’re absolutely on the money with that. There was actually a study that we talk about in the book from, I think, two years ago about how people feel about their human medical doctors versus how they feel about AI. In the study, people reported that they trusted, or they reported that they felt that they were getting more empathy from ChatGPT or other AI chatbots when compared to their human doctor. That makes all the sense in the world to me, as somebody who navigated the caregiving journey of my father.

Doctors are overwhelmed. They are saving lives. They can only give you so much time. Most importantly, they are human, so they have all the hangups and blind spots and foibles and problems and frailties that humans have. Not for nothing, AI is built and trained by humans as well. All of our blind spots and hangups. It is learning from the information that we collectively put on the internet.

The fact that people self-reported that they felt like they could be more honest with a chatbot versus their human doctor, and felt like they could rely more on a chatbot than their human doctor. The fact that people are saying that they feel like they can be more honest or they’re going to be less judged with AI versus human doctors really illustrates your point that, for better or for worse, for a lot of people, AI is just a more convenient, more accessible, always-on 24/7 resource for support. Whether that support that you’re getting is good or true or a hallucination or faulty or dangerous, we could have that conversation, but I think that’s what people are getting out of going to AI for their problems versus going to a human friend.

Well said, and I like how you talk about it with the medical profession, where when you have someone, whether it is a doctor or a best friend, who is more patient, more available, more trustworthy in some ways, I am not saying compared to a friend, it can be really compelling to reach out and get your needs met in that forum. It is good to almost marry the two when it comes to medicine.

Don't trade the complexity of a human best friend for the hollow convenience of a digital algorithm. Share on X

Use the doctor as a resource, as the gatekeeper, and then do a lot of research back and forth because I have also found that chatbots can give different answers depending on the day. I can feed in the same information, like, “What do you think of this supplement?” One day it will say this, and then I feed it another day, and it will give me different information. It’s like, “I still really need to be on my toes with this stuff.” It’s interesting. In a way, it’s fun.

If we temper our relationship with AI, it can be fun, it can be educational, it can be really helpful, keeping in mind that our human relationships are vital. Even though they are not often as convenient or tireless, they are a really critical part of what makes human life worth living. I will tell you, on the day I die, I would rather have a friend by my side than try to hold hands with my mouse or computer screen. That does not sound very much fun. I would rather be surrounded by loved ones than any number of bots. That is a scary thought.

I am right there with you. I would rather be surrounded by loved ones, even though my loved ones are sometimes annoying or inconvenient or a source of friction. Even still, I would rather be surrounded by these people because those are genuine human connections and friendships, and that is what nourishes our lives. AI can be a great tool for all kinds of temporary stopgap solutions. It can be a great tool to do certain specific things, but it cannot replace the things that we know make up a good, full, nourished life. That’s human relationships and human connections.

Back to the word friction, because I really like the word. I had never thought of it more than high school science classes, where it is two things rubbing against each other. I was like, “It’s like sandpaper, friction.” I forget what I was listening to, but they were really talking about how essential friction is. Without friction, we would be falling all over the place. We need that friction between the Earth and the soles of our shoes to keep us stable, and when we think about that in the context of relationships, where there is no friction, we can get a little unstable.

We really need a certain amount of it, going back to where we started to really form as human beings, stay strong, continue to grow strong, be real, be authentic, and make life worth living because I do not think life, at least for me, would be very much fun if I was turning to my chatbot more than once a day for five minutes. No.

I agree. That’s how we grow. The tension and friction and challenges of being in relationship with other humans is how we grow as humans. It reminds me of this conversation I have been seeing on the internet a lot of this idea that everybody wants a village, but nobody wants to be a villager. Part of being a villager is taking your cousin to the airport, even though you would rather sleep in, or hearing about your friend’s breakup, even though you just wish she would dump the guy already and move on. Those are the things that help us grow, and it helps sustain both those relationships and us in relationship to our own selves.

Thank you. You’re taking us back to the key piece with this listener. That part of having a village is being a villager. Unless you want to be a rock sitting on the pathway. When we are a villager, there is that give and take, that back and forth. As you said, I love your use of the word tension, allowing it. Many of us have learned to be uncomfortable with any amount of discomfort. It’s why yoga is such a good teacher for me and continues to be a good teacher. Being in an uncomfortable position is not bad.

Being in an uncomfortable position, like a pigeon, where you’re opening your hips, is necessary. We need to be able to tolerate discomfort. Does not mean we tolerate cruelty, but if we learn to tolerate discomfort, we know it for what it is. We’re stretching ourselves. We’re stretching. AI cannot do that for us. Even if it did, it is not an enduring human relationship. When we look at the listener’s question, where she is saying, “What do I do with this?” What would you recommend that she do to maybe chat with her friend about how mad she is at being replaced, so to speak, by a chatbot?

Your yoga analogy is a good one. I would definitely have a direct conversation with this friend and make it clear how much you value and have gotten out of the sharing of your emotional selves with each other, and how you want to be given the opportunity to continue to be there for her in that way. I remember when my parents died, I was in a grief group and the person running the group told me that oftentimes people who are grieving get a lot of benefit out of connecting with other people and helping them navigate their grief. I did that.

I joined a group where I was paired up with someone and was their grief buddy. I did get a lot of value out of that. I would say, lead with the fact that when your friend shares what’s going on in her life, it is not just something that she is doing to make herself feel better. It makes you feel better as well. Give her the opportunity. Have your friend give you the opportunity to be there for her in that way and make her feel the trust that you are getting something out of it, that you do not feel burdened. In fact, this is why you’re friends in the first place.

I would also just continue to model that behavior. Just because she’s using AI to vent with her problems, continue to vent to her, continue to show her that trust that you believe that she will show up for you, and model the behavior that you’re hoping to see from her, getting back to the place where you do share and give and take and experience that reciprocity that comes with healthy relationships.

Thank you for that because I think modeling what we want is so critical, and being able to vent to a friend, share joys, share concerns, share fun. Those are the things that AI will never be able to give us, not those. As you were speaking, I thought the word memories came to mind. With humans, we build memories. We have the experiences of, my goodness, we sat over coffee, and we talked about this or that, or our kids growing, or the troubles we are having, whatever it is. For you to have memories with your friends when you were going through the issues with your dad and all the grief, those are.

Whereas getting support from a chatbot is as important as that can be, we can go, “That was really great that it was there for me during that time.” We do not have the memory. We do not have the memory of spreading the ashes or the funeral or crying jags by the side of the hospital bed, whatever it might be. Those are the important things for perhaps this listener and all our audiences to remember. When we want to be able to make memories, because memories are such a crucial part of what gives us life meaning, not just in the moment, but 30 seconds later, a year later, we go, “Do you remember that?”

That’s what I think it’s so important for us to remember about human relationships. We are building memories every time we interact, whether they’re healthy or unhealthy, sticky, annoying, fun, whatever they are. Some of my favorite memories are the annoying ones. It was like, “Do you remember we did that road trip and what a pain you were at this spot and what a brat I was at this spot?” It’s fun.

Remembering we cannot replace these relationships, and we cannot or maybe do not want to let the human relationships go, and then try and pick them up a year or two later when we feel we’re done with a chatbot or even after a week and we’re like, “The chatbot filled me up here, but now I want to meet my friend for coffee.” The friend might be going, “This does not feel good. It feels like I’m just a placeholder.”

Why We Need to Build Memories

I’ve used AI plenty in my life, and I do not have a single memory. I could not tell. There is not. I cannot tell you a single bon mot that ChatGPT said that I was like, “I’m going to remember that.” What I do remember is the way my friends showed up for me. I remember the conversations that I had with my friends. I remember the day after my mom’s funeral, my friends completely unasked, self-organized to come to the funeral, states away, and just see. I do not have a single memory of something that ChatGPT said, but the memories that I do have are from my mom’s funeral.

My friends all self-organized to attend, drive states away to show up in the pews, and I will never forget what it felt like to see them there for me. I had not even asked. I thought, “They’re not going to want to drive hours away in traffic to be here for a funeral of somebody they never met.” I still remember the day of my mom’s funeral, my friends all self-organizing to show up and to attend.

I had not even asked them. I thought there was no way they were going to even want to come to this funeral, states away from somebody they never even met. I’ll never forget what it felt like to go into the church and see them in the pews and that they were there for me in a way I did not even know that I needed. AI cannot do that

No. What great friends you have. It sounds perfect, truly. What a show of heart and deep friendship. It takes us back to the audience’s question. The issue is relationships can be messy. They can have their ups and downs. We want to do whatever we can to keep them going and strong and not default to air-quoted relationships that are easy and one-sided because there are many, there are some upsides, but there are many downsides that we want to keep on our radar because treasuring fellow humans is a really important thing to do. It’s really important to nourish those relationships. Bridget, I just adore the work you do. You have such a beautiful presence, and I am so honored that you brought all this wisdom to us today. Where can our audiences find you?

Where to Find Bridget Todd

Dr. Carla, thank you so much for having me. What a beautiful space that you have built and curated. Just wanted to say that. Folks can check out my audiobook. You can pre-order it or order it at loveatfirstprompt.ai. You can follow me on Instagram @BridgetMarianDC and check out my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Excellent, Bridget. Thank you. Audiences, please do not worry if you’re driving or do not have a pen handy. Bridget’s notes, all of that, will be in the show notes. You will be able to find her with a click of a button. Do not worry. The spelling of Bridget’s name is Bridget Todd. You will be able to find Bridget and her amazing work and her audiobook, Love at First Prompt, to learn more about falling in love with AI, the upside down, and the downsides. Thanks again, Bridget, for joining us. To our audiences, thank you so much, as always, for tuning in. It is, as ever, my joy, my privilege, and my delight. This is Imperfect Love.

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About Bridget Todd

Bridget Todd is an award-winning creator, host, and producer who crafts compelling digital content and podcasts at the intersection of technology, culture, and identity. Ms. Todd is also a co-author of the audio book, “Love at First Prompt.” She is the creator and host of the critically acclaimed podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, and Mozilla’s award-winning podcast IRL: AI in Real Life, which explores the ethical impact of artificial intelligence. A trusted voice in technology, Bridget has worked directly with platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok to champion safety, equity, and meaningful representation online. Her work on technology, race, and gender has been featured in outlets like The Atlantic, Newsweek, The Nation, and The Daily Show. Bridget is a Technology in the Public Interest Fellow at the MacArthur Foundation and an affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Carla Marie Manly, PhD

Carla Marie Manly, PhD

The Truth About AI Friendship: Artificial Intimacy or Real Connection?

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

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Listen to the podcast here

The Truth About AI Friendship: Artificial Intimacy or Real Connection?

Understanding Our Connection to Technology

Navigating the Listener Question

Why We Project Humanity onto Bots

The Power Dynamic of Profit-Driven AI

The Value of Human Friction

Why We Need to Build Memories

Where to Find Bridget Todd

Important Links

About Bridget Todd

Carla Marie Manly, PhD

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