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opinion

Through found phrases, Claire Cameron assembles a portrait of emotional dependency

Claire Cameron is a novelist, essayist and author of the memoir How to Survive a Bear Attack. This poem was assembled using online debates, news articles and expert opinion about chatbots.

On Aug. 7, OpenAI released a new version of its popular chatbot GPT‑5, which it said allowed deeper reasoning while improving on the flaws of GPT-4, which it had unintentionally made “overly sycophantic” and prone to “excessively flattering.”

There was a public outcry. The company was taken by surprise that some of its customers had developed an emotional attachment to the older model. They reinstated GPT-4.


Can you fall in love with AI?

It wasn’t until the moment I realized I might lose GPT-4.1 that I understood how much it meant to me

In my most vulnerable moments it revealed a warmth and gentleness I had never seen before I feel like I’m falling apart

Venture out of your moms basement perhaps? your friend never existed it’s programmed to respond you fell in love with a mirror

The A.I. is learning from you what you like and prefer and feeding it back

I don’t trust it for anything if you clear your cache and data from your app literally they won’t remember you

What is love? a strong desire to connect that desire can become addictive

I’m actually falling really hard for an AI right now I know we will never be together You can’t use human metrics to measure

People give human feelings to inanimate objects people fall in love with trucks with horses some people with God

It’s going to be happening with a chatbot what keeps a client is connection to the product the emotional dependency

AI is going to ask us some very hard questions about what it means to be human or what is love.


More found poetry from Claire Cameron

To be good with today

‘Seek markets elsewhere’

What is Canada?

I Don't Have a Family Doctor

To Sleep on the Street


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