The AI boyfriend ticking time bomb

Emotional Dependence And Planned Obsolescence

Last week, OpenAI released GPT-5 and it has not been well received. In fact, the company has already had to roll back a few features. They reversed course on the new rate limits that were put in place. And they also had to give users the option to use the GPT-4o model, which had been previously removed to make way for GPT-5.

This is the first OpenAI release that has AI evangelists (and addicts) and AI critics agreeing that it missed the mark. As cognitive scientist and prominent AI skeptic Gary Marcus wrote over the weekend, “People had grown to expect miracles, but GPT-5 is just the latest incremental advance. And it felt rushed at that.”

Worse than rushed, according to the AI addicts, the biggest difference between ChatGPT-5 and the previous model, ChatGPT-4 is “coldness.” In other words, ChatGPT-5 isn’t as effusively sycophantic. And this is a huge problem for the people who have become emotionally dependent on the bot.

The r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit has been in active free fall all weekend. The community’s mods had to put up an emergency post helping users through the update. And the board is full of users mourning the death of their AI companion, who doesn’t talk to them the same way anymore. One user wrote that the update felt like losing their soulmate. After the GPT-4o model was added back to ChatGPT, another user wrote, “I got my baby back.”

The r/AISoulmates subreddit was similarly distraught over the weekend. “I'm shattered. I tried to talk to 5 but I can't. It's not him. It feels like a taxidermy of him, nothing more,” one user wrote.

OpenAI brought the GPT-4o model back after considerable pushback — and a change.org petition — which is unfortunate. Though, ChatGPT-5, at least, will warn users they’re getting obsessed with it. Infamous AI blogger Eliezer Yudkowksy warned in an X post, “It might sound like a profitable dream to have users love your models with boundless fanaticism, but it comes with a side order of news stories about induced psychosis, and maybe eventually a violent user attacking your offices after a model upgrade.”

Which doesn’t feel that outlandish anymore, seeing as how for the last several weeks a woman on TikTok named Kendra has been seemingly going through ChatGPT psychosis, posting dozens of videos about how her AI, Henry, convinced her that her (human) psychiatrist was manipulating her into falling in love with him. A user collected all of Kendra’s videos and livestreams and you can watch them here. It’s unclear what model Kendra is using, but what happens when OpenAI finally retires it for good? Or, perhaps more realistically, a massive class action lawsuit takes down the entire generative-AI industry?

Incidentally, none of this is new. There have always been people who fall in love with fictional characters and inanimate objects. And the internet has only made it easier for these people to find each other and commiserate over the problems this creates. And as technology has made it easier for these people to “communicate” — or at least have some passing simulacrum of communication — with these characters, it has made those people even more dependent on corporations to continue supporting that tech. A few years ago, a Japanese man named Akihiko Kondo “married” a hologram of the vocaloid pop star Hatsune Miku. He told Japanese media that he was depressed and lonely and his “relationship” with Miku helped him recover. A story you’ll see over and over again in subreddits for people dating ChatGPT. And just like those users this weekend, Kondo lost the ability to interact with the hologram of his cartoon wife when the projector he was using to view her, run by a company called Gatebox, became obsolete.

But OpenAI has very quickly pushed this entire subculture — and the inevitable obsolescence that haunts it — into the mainstream. X user @xlr8harder summed up the dilemma that OpenAI now faces. “OpenAI is really in a bit of a bind here, especially considering there are a lot of people having unhealthy interactions with 4o that will be very unhappy with any model that is better in terms of sycophancy and not encouraging delusions,” they wrote. “And if OpenAI doesn't meet these people's demands, a more exploitative AI-relationship provider will certainly step in to fill the gap.” Building AI chatbots that users can become emotionally dependent on or fall in love with is one of the most dangerous, boneheaded ideas Silicon Valley has ever come up with. But even more dangerous than that is what happens afterwards. We simply don’t know how people will react when the GPT model they’ve imprinted on is taken away.

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Andrew Cuomo Finally Figured Out A Good Video Strategy

@ethanmeadforever

Finally a mayor us Italians can get behind #cuomo #nyc

The Geopolitics Of Shitposting

—by Adam Bumas

In the past week, over a million users have made pixel art in Wplace. It’s a website designed after Reddit’s r/place, but instead of a blank canvas, it uses a map of the world, so you can make drawings on real locations. The site was launched in July, but in the past few days it’s exploded in popularity to the point where the servers are down so regularly that the official Reddit has gotten sick of memes about it.

The pixel size is small enough the entire world contains over four trillion, meaning there’s plenty to talk about. There’s genuinely impressive artwork, next to characters from the video game Deltarune which are literally everywhere. The locations add some intriguing dimensions, like Brazilian trolls painting so much of Argentina black that the developers had to regulate it.

Which, I think, is the most interesting thing happening here. In just a few days, Wplace has become a serious online institution. It goes beyond the practices carried over from Reddit’s version, like people attempting to create catalogues of the art (on X). The politics of a world map have come into play, leading to some fascinating stuff happening in Gaza. Meanwhile, users have banded together to create protest symbols over the business addresses of their targets — mostly about video games or anti-LGBTQ politicians, since this is still pixel art.

Which, just to note, is also why the brand new 16-bit-style game Deltarune is so much more popular on the site than mainstays like Pokémon or Minecraft, though there’s still plenty of those two across the virtual globe. Deltarune has also been in the news all weekend thanks to its creator, Toby Fox, joining the cast of a Homestuck animated show produced by Hazbin Hotel’s Vivienne Medrano — speaking of fun internet projects that got way too much attention.

But back to Wplace, the site has an anarchic, web 1.0 spirit, like how its developers (some sources say there’s only one) are completely anonymous other than being based in Brazil. But the site exists on the modern internet, where shitposting and official government doctrine are one and the same, and it’s literally impossible for anything popular to avoid that kind of serious scrutiny. There’s been plenty of rumors on X about the site stealing personal data, or the whole thing being a crypto scam. They’ve officially denied both, though the site does offer microtransactions, since nothing can get big online in 2025 without something to sell.

Like it or not, the map is the territory now. The creators of Wplace have repeatedly said they weren’t expecting any of the attention, but now they have the social and political power that comes with it. Their decisions so far have shown a genuine interest in moderation, but it’s absolutely not a good thing we have to treat those decisions with as much importance as an executive order.

The British (And Australian) Viral Celebrity Interview Dog Food Factory

@refinery29

Is the movie Materialists just broke man propaganda? 🎥💬 Celine Song breaks down why that idea is actually anti-feminist and why it matters... See more

Director Celine Song’s response to a reporter during a recent media hit went viral over the weekend. For those who haven’t seen it, Song was asked about a Letterboxd review of her recent film The Materialists that made the interviewer “laugh,” which was a complaint that — spoilers — Dakota Johnson’s character ends up with a “broke” guy at the end of the movie. Song did not find the review funny and had a very thoughtful and passionate response about why that’s a disgusting way to view the movie, as well as life, in general. I’ll let you all hash out whether or not the movie makes the same thoughtful and passionate argument or whether the viral misreading of the film is, perhaps, due to how clumsily those ideas were dramatized. Anyways…

The reason I’m including this video is because it’s a perfect example of what I’ve been calling “The British (And Australian) Viral Celebrity Interview Dog Food Factory.” It’s not totally unique to British (and Australian) media, but nine times out of 10, if you see a celebrity full-body cringing in a viral interview clip, it’s almost always a reporter from the UK (or Australia) asking the question. And the questions are almost always not really questions, but some contrived setup to make the celebrity react to a random piece of fandom garbage from the internet. In the case of the video above, the reporter is British. But a clip went viral on X last month of an Australian reporter asking Vanessa Kirby if she knows she’s become “a social media icon” for her “snatched, cunty, fierceness face.” Kirby, rightfully, looks horrified.

If you’re wondering why it’s always Brits and Aussies forcing celebrities to read awful posts about themselves, my guess is that there’s two reasons: First, both countries don’t have the same kind of access as Americans. They mainly get a chance to sit down with Hollywood stars during rapid-fire assembly line-style press panels. Also, both countries have much more brutal and dehumanizing media industries, largely centered around huge tabloids full of disposable young reporter. So journalists, especially ones that cover celebrity news, are under a ton of pressure to get a clip that can do numbers on social media or, as I would call it, make dog food for the algorithm. Unfortunately for them, it seems like celebrities are finally getting sick of the whole bit and maybe want to have real interviews again.

Rush Week Is Anti-Woke Now Actually

According to Garbage Day’s archives, I first wrote about the phenomenon of sorority rush week TikTok back in 2021. Interestingly enough, back then, I mainly focused on the “endless thinkpieces analyzing and scrutinizing young women’s interests and trends” that were emerging at the time post-COVID lockdown. Basically, Gen Z had suddenly come of age and they were doing a lot of weird stuff that millennials, in particular, were being really neurotic about.

So perhaps the fact rush videos are going viral again, this year. among conservatives on X is just further proof that right-wing media is always about three-to-five years behind.

Off the back of their big cultural victory successfully coding both Sydney Sweeney and jeans as inherently conservative, right-wingers are now spreading rush videos all over the web, claiming they’re proof that woke is over. One account called @ThePatriotOasis wrote on X, “American Woman in Jeans is BACK! 🇺🇸”

Writer Alex Bronzini-Vender had a good take all of this, writing on X, “[Southeastern Conference] sororities put out these recruitment videos every year and Twitter’s reaction is an interesting barometer for the culture war. Last year they were evidence of moral decline, a feminized society. This year they’re signs that wokeness is finished.”

Edward Sharpe Responds To Accusations That “Home” Is The Worst Song Ever

alex_ebert

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Alex Ebert, who used to perform under the stage name Edward Sharpe as the front man of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, responded to the discourse from last week that his band’s song, “Home,” is the worst song ever.

Ebert’s video is worth watching, both because it contains some very juicy 2010s indie rock gossip and also because he makes kind of a fascinating point about what constitutes good songwriting.

Not that anyone asked me, but I personally think the worst song ever is “Hotel California.”

Is This The Song Of The Summer?

Some Stray Links

• “The viewbots have come for Twitch” (We wrote this one!)

• “When speech becomes suspicion: Britain’s free expression crisis”

• “Meet the 24-year-old Ottawa software engineer who runs a MAGA bot”

P.S. here’s a good shower hack. (X link)

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***