AI prompt slips in text messaging apps are on the rise. #
Posted June 27, 2026 [ Reviewed by Margaret Foley
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Key points
- People are increasing "chatfishing," using AI apps to generate texts to their romantic interests.
- Sometimes they'll slip up during chatfishing and post their AI prompts in the chat with the other person.
- This may represent a modern form of a Freudian slip, revealing an unconscious impulse to end the relationship.
As more and more people are using AI apps daily, reports of an embarrassing new phenomenon pop up all over social media: Accidentally texting other people prompts that were meant to go to an AI app.
Let me explain: For example, when chatting with someone they met on an online dating platform, some people do not actually write their text messages themselves but resort to "chatfishing." Chatfishing is the use of AI apps such as ChatGPT to write text messages to a dating partner (Béchard, 2025). Thus, they first prompt something like: “Please write a funny and heartfelt message to a dating partner, complimenting them on their appearance and asking them how they are!”
Then, they copy the output of the AI app to the text messaging app and send it to their dating partner.
There can be different reasons why people resort to chatfishing. On the one hand, some people are just not very creative when writing text messages and may feel that it is easier to let an AI tool do the hard creative work. On the other hand, one reason for doing so is that it takes much less time for people to have messages created by an AI than to come up with something funny and smart on their own. Also, AI messages are generally free of typos, which may be a plus to people who have issues with proper spelling.
The dangers of chatfishing #
Chatfishing does not come without dangers. If someone accidentally writes the prompt that was meant for the AI app into the text message app so that the other person realizes that they have been chatfished, this will likely result in a conflict or the end of the relationship. Of course, the embarrassing situations of accidentally writing an AI prompt into a text message app can also occur in many other situations than just chatfishing—basically, every time someone uses AI to generate text with the intent of using it to communicate with other people.
Could there be more to AI prompt slips in text messaging apps? #
The interesting question from a psychological point of view is whether these AI prompting slips are just human errors or whether there is more to it.
From a psychological perspective, they fall into the larger category of language or communication errors. Such errors fascinated the founder of [psychoanalysis](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychoanalysis), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He wrote about what today is called a [Freudian](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/freudian-psychology) slip: seemingly meaningless language errors that, in Freud's view, may reveal repressed [unconscious](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/unconscious) impulses (Freud, 1901).
For example, someone is still attached to their ex-partner who left them for a younger lover. While they are somewhat happy with their new partner, in an expression of love, they call the new partner by the name of the ex-partner. The Freudian view would be that this was not a random error, but rather reflects an unconscious wish to still be with the ex-partner.
Interpreting AI-prompting mistakes during chatfishing as a modern form of Freudian slips thus would suggest that people who make such mistakes unconsciously would like to end the relationship with their chatting partner, but may be reluctant to do so up front. Maybe they are annoyed by their chat partner and feel like the conversation is a waste of time.
It is fascinating how psychological concepts more than 100 years old, like the Freudian slip, may still be relevant to understanding how we interact with AI these days.
References
Béchard, D.E. (2025). So You Fell for a Robot—‘Chatfishing’ Is Taking Over the Dating Apps. Scientific American.
Freud, S. (1901). Psychopathology of Everyday Life.