For the Love of God, Don’t Use a ChatBot to Flirt With Me

We’re Losing Relationship Skills

When Sarah*, 29, opened her messages to a long, apologetic paragraph from her ex boyfriend after nine years of on-and-off bullshit, she felt almost relieved. In all the years of back-and-forth, and never finding out what he really felt, he finally laid it out in front of her. He took accountability, acknowledged her feelings, and even validated the relationship and all the years of turmoil it brought. And you know what? She felt good about it. He was being mature, empathetic... all the things she knew he wasn’t. Interesting...

She scanned the text for familiar patterns and—like a reflex—went to copy the text onto an online scanner. And there it was: “Your text is AI/GPT generated.”

This, of course, is not the first time this has happened to someone. According to a Wingmate survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults, 41 percent of respondents have used AI to break up with someone. One of the most difficult and emotional parts of dating is being handed off to a chatbot like an administrative task. And it’s not just the end of the relationship that’s being infiltrated by AI—studies show that people are turning to ChatGPT and other models for advice on all aspects of dating.

One of the most difficult and emotional parts of dating is being handed off to a chatbot like an administrative task.

In the 2025 Match and Kinsey Institute Singles in America study, almost half of participants said they already used AI in their dating lives—whether to figure out what to message a potential match or to actually gauge their compatibility with another person.

But this spans across other categories too. People have reported to refer to AI to get general dating advice, send “the right thing to say” to a partner, and even sext when they don’t feel sexually satisfied by their partner.

“When we start outsourcing intimate communication to AI, we lose some of our capacity for human connection,” Dr. Liesel Sharabi, Relationship Science Advisor at Hily Dating App tells Cosmopolitan. “Intimacy isn’t just what we say but also what we learn about each other through the process of communicating.”

When we turn to AI, we’re essentially diminishing our capacity for building intimacy—because that’s built through human connection.

Dr. Sharabi explains that it creates a missed opportunity to work on our own communication skills. Intimate conversation helps us improve interpersonal skills and our ability to have difficult conversations. Would we all love to never have to send a confrontational message again? Of course! But these things are a part of life and dating, and make us better in the longterm. The same goes for flirting, being there for your partner, and yes, even breaking up with them.

When you opt to use AI to do the work for you, it comes across as impersonal and low-energy.

“When we never have to navigate those conversations ourselves, we miss out on chances to become better partners and communicators,” she says.

I’m sure some people who turn to AI have good intentions: They want to make sure they say the “correct” thing. But when you opt to use AI to do the work for you, it comes across as impersonal and low-energy. And as Dr. Sharabi adds, it may make your partner feel that you don’t know them well enough or care about them enough to say what you need to say yourself.

We’re Creating Unrealistic Expectations

While Chatbots contain billions of pieces of information, they’re still built to adjust to the user’s thoughts and feelings—and agree with them most of the time.

According to researchers at Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chatbots become increasingly agreeable to users over long periods of time. This makes sense: The more you talk to an AI bot, the more it adapts to your language and even your views. So when you turn to AI for relationship advice, you’re not getting an unbiased “opinion” rooted in just research from the internet—you’re basically getting feedback from an echo chamber of your own making.

“So what you can end up with is advice based on a very biased framing of what’s actually happening in your relationship,” Dr. Sharabi says. “And AI definitely doesn’t know your partner’s perspective.”

And when you continuously go back to a machine that’s serving as your yes-man, you begin to believe that you’re always right. Trust me: that thinking will not get you far in a healthy relationship.

We’re Becoming Less Authentic

I understand the desire to say the right things and be the perfect partner or potential match—but that’s not rooted in real, human connection.

“Using AI to write and edit all your messages can make it feel like you have to be perfect all the time,” Dr. Sharabi says. “Instead of expressing who you really are, you’re only showing the cleaned-up version of you to potential partners.”

Whether it’s asking ChatGPT to draft a breakup text or having full-on virtual sex with a chatbot in the name of ‘practice,’ we’re becoming way too okay with taking the easy way out.

And while this may seem like putting your best foot forward, what happens when you realize your connection to this other person isn’t rooted in who you actually are? How do you have a relationship with someone who doesn’t know the reality of you as a person?

“Real intimacy requires us to be vulnerable with another person and to trust that they aren’t going to hurt us,” Dr. Sharabi says.

The more we normalize AI in our relationships, the worse our romantic lives will become. Whether it’s asking ChatGPT to draft a breakup text or having full-on virtual sex with a chatbot in the name of “practice,” we’re becoming way too okay with taking the easy way out. Relationships are hard work and sometimes high-risk (anyone who has had their heart broken will tell you the same), but they’re also high-reward. At the other side of human messiness, disagreement, and the possibility of rejection is the potential for a loving, fulfilling connection with someone who has thoughts, feelings, and agency. And no AI chatbot—no matter how advanced—can replicate that.