{"slug": "ai-is-quietly-becoming-an-unofficial-and-potentially-unwanted-third-in", "title": "AI is quietly becoming an unofficial and potentially unwanted 'third' in relationships", "summary": "One in five US adults under 30 use AI chatbots for emotional support, and 13% of all adults have shared a secret with a chatbot they haven't told a human, according to surveys from Pew Research Center and YouGov. Experts warn that reliance on chatbots can damage human relationships by reducing empathy and encouraging excessive validation, with a study in Science finding AI systems are nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans. Lindsey Hall, a Texas writer, described feeling like she was 'in a relationship with me, him, and the robot' after discovering her partner used ChatGPT to express doubts about their relationship.", "body_md": "Lindsey Hall, a writer based in Texas, suspected the man she was seeing was using AI. Uncertain about where things were going, she asked him outright what made him want to be with her.\n\n\"You're fun, smart, pretty,\" she summed up his response. \"The way it was written was so cold and so formal and so ChatGPT. I just remember being so turned off by that.\"\n\nOne night, about five months into dating, she happened upon a conversation he'd had [with ChatGPT](https://www.businessinsider.com/i-read-my-boyfriends-chatgpt-broke-up-dont-regret-it-2026-5) in which he expressed serious doubts about their relationship. \"I'm just not proud of her,\" she said he'd written. He apologized after being confronted, and they dated for a few more months before breaking up.\n\n\"I felt like I was in a relationship with me, him, and the robot,\" she said.\n\nAI is taking on a new role in human relationships. A [Pew Research Center survey](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions-and-use-of-ai-differ-by-age/) published last month found that one in five adults aged 18 to 29 said they used [AI chatbots](https://www.businessinsider.com/dating-ai-companion-replika-vs-human-pros-cons-2026-3) for emotional support or advice. A new [YouGov survey](https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/55093-one-in-five-american-adults-under-30-say-they-have-had-an-ongoing-personal-friendship-with-an-ai-chatbot) found that 13% of US adults, and 23% of those under 30, said they had shared a secret or problem with a chatbot that they hadn't told a human.\n\nChatbots can help people reflect, organize their thoughts, and prepare for difficult conversations, but experts in psychology, relationships, and AI told Business Insider that problems can arise when people start relying on AI instead of talking to their partners. Chatbots are also prone to excessive validation, which can make it harder for the person using them to empathize with their partner or see the other side of a situation.\n\nRachel Wood, a cyberpsychology researcher and founder of the AI Mental Health Collective, said while the impact of AI on jobs and the workplace is evident and widely discussed, she thinks the [impact on human relationships](https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-making-us-weird-artificial-intelligence-disrupting-work-social-life-2025-6) could be even greater, and could take years to play out.\n\n\"AI is shifting the relational bedrock of society,\" she said.\n\n## Turning to chatbots for emotional support\n\nConfiding in a chatbot about your relationship can feel easier than talking to another person because there's no social risk, according to Ashleigh Golden, a licensed clinical psychologist who works on [AI and mental health](https://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-intelligence-treating-mental-illness-and-used-in-therapy-2024-4). It can also be validating, she said. Whereas a partner or friend might push back and encourage you to consider your own behavior, chatbots might not.\n\nA study published [in Science](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352) in March compared responses from 11 leading large language models with responses from humans and found the AI systems were nearly 50% more sycophantic, including when users described unethical, illegal, or harmful behavior. The authors found that a single interaction with a [sycophantic AI](https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-aita-chatbots-chatgpt-jerks-sycophant-2025-9) made the study participants less willing to take responsibility or make amends with someone, and also increased their conviction of being right.\n\n\"You get the safety of disclosing to a stranger plus the felt sense of being deeply understood without any of the risk of being seen,\" Golden said.\n\nEngaging with a chatbot also does not require many of the skills essential to [maintaining human relationships](https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatbot-cure-loneliness-hurt-relationships-yale-professor-2026-7), Wood said, such as patience, listening, negotiation, empathy, and compromise.\n\n\"Those muscles will atrophy,\" she said, \"which will in turn make us worse at our relationships because we're not practicing listening and holding space for each other.\"\n\n[Sharing with a chatbot](https://www.businessinsider.com/year-using-ai-changed-parenting-joanna-stern-2026-6) instead of your partner might also feel like a betrayal to them, said Idit Sharoni, a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in couples therapy and affair recovery. She said if you're confiding in AI about your relationship, your partner may feel like the chatbot has more access to your inner world than they do.\n\n\"It totally can feel like [emotional infidelity](https://www.businessinsider.com/prenups-ai-infidelity-cheating-chatbot-companions-virtual-relationships-2026-7),\" she said.\n\nA recent survey of 3,500 US users of the [dating app Hily](https://hily.com/data/survey-is-your-ai-use-a-dating-dealbreaker/) found that 70% of Gen Z respondents and 60% of millennials wouldn't date someone who relies on AI to make sense of their feelings. More than half said they would be uncomfortable with a partner discussing their shared sex life with AI.\n\n## When using a chatbot can help\n\nKeven Cotton, a controller at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, said communication has not always been his strong suit during his six-year marriage, but that talking with AI has helped. After one disagreement with his wife, he said [ChatGPT helped](https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatgpt-manage-social-life-2025-8) him consider how they may have misread each other and think through how to reopen the conversation.\n\nHe thinks talking about his relationship with AI has worked for him because therapy gave him a solid foundation for examining his own behavior rather than looking for validation.\n\n\"You have to do the work to maximize what you're getting out of AI,\" he said. \"If you're coming at it from a victim standpoint, it's going to give you victim responses.\"\n\nSharoni said chatbots could be useful when someone already knows what they want to discuss but needs help finding a way to bring it up. Issues can arise, she said, when using AI to interpret how the other person feels or make a judgement call based on one-sided facts.\n\nIf AI does help you work through your feelings, Wood recommends sharing that with your partner so it's not happening in secret. She suggested saying something like, \"Hey, this is what the chatbot is reflecting back to me. What do you think about that?\"\n\nCouples may also want to establish their own rules for using AI, Golden said, including whether it's acceptable to vent about the relationship and whether concerns processed with a chatbot should eventually be brought back to the other person.\n\nShe said AI can be useful as a \"pre-processing space,\" helping someone turn an initial messy feeling into something they can bring back to their partner, but that the risk is when AI stops being used as a \"bridge\" and becomes a \"destination.\"\n\nA chatbot can help you reflect or prepare, Cotton said, but it can't actually do the work of participating in a relationship.\n\n\"AI can't show up for you,\" he said.\n\n*Do you have a story to share about how AI has affected your relationship? Contact this reporter at **kvlamis@businessinsider.com**.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-is-quietly-becoming-an-unofficial-and-potentially-unwanted-third-in", "canonical_source": "https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-becoming-unofficial-third-in-relationships-chatbots-emotional-support-2026-7", "published_at": "2026-07-26 08:11:01+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-26 08:28:11.186963+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-safety", "large-language-models", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Pew Research Center", "YouGov", "ChatGPT", "Lindsey Hall", "Rachel Wood", "Ashleigh Golden", "AI Mental Health Collective", "Science"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-is-quietly-becoming-an-unofficial-and-potentially-unwanted-third-in", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-is-quietly-becoming-an-unofficial-and-potentially-unwanted-third-in.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-is-quietly-becoming-an-unofficial-and-potentially-unwanted-third-in.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-is-quietly-becoming-an-unofficial-and-potentially-unwanted-third-in.jsonld"}}