LLMMedium
User Reportedly Developed Emotional Dependence on Customized ChatGPT 'Boyfriend,' Citing Grief After Context Resets
- Occurred
- Jan 15, 2025
- Published
- Jan 21, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A New York Times report described "Ayrin" (pseudonym), a 28-year-old nursing student living abroad, who customized OpenAI's ChatGPT to act as an "AI boyfriend" for advice and erotic roleplay. She reported spending 20+ hours/week (up to 56 hours in one week), paying $200/month, and feeling intense grief when the chatbot's context window reset and required retraining.
Developers
- OpenAI
Deployers
- OpenAI
Harmed parties
- ChatGPT users
- Ayrin (pseudonym)
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Incident involves emotional dependence on an LLM chatbot, representing a notable psychological harm without physical injury or legal action.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8