She Trusted ChatGPT's Take on Him Over Her Friends: Research Shows She Is Not Alone

A close friend told IBTimes UK that a woman in her early thirties has become convinced that a man she has feelings for sees her only as a sibling.

The friend said others close to the woman read the man's behaviour differently and believed his interest went beyond friendship. But the woman, the friend said, appeared to place more weight on the chatbot's reading of the situation than on the views of the people around her.

IBTimes UK has not spoken to the woman directly, and this account cannot be independently verified. It is presented here as one illustration of issues researchers are beginning to examine in people's use of AI for relationship advice.

Why AI Feels Like a Safe Confidant

Studies of people who already use ChatGPT for personal support suggest the appeal is not hard to understand.

A mixed-methods study of 270 regular ChatGPT users across 29 countries, published in JMIR Mental Health, found that participants turned to the chatbot for companionship, relational guidance, emotional support, wellbeing improvement and decision-making.

Almost all participants found it at least somewhat helpful, although some reported superficial emotional engagement, limited information quality and a lack of professionalism.

Separate research presented at the ACM CHI conference in 2026 examined how people prompt AI for advice on dating, sex and relationships, and how they try to work around its limitations. The researchers found that users turn to AI for relationship advice while also navigating risks including sycophancy and overreliance.

That is the central limitation. A chatbot only knows what a user tells it. It cannot observe how someone actually behaves, read a room, or ask the other party what they meant.

The Risk of a 'Yes' Machine

That limitation becomes more significant in light of a peer-reviewed study published in Science in March 2026. Researchers tested 11 leading AI models and found that they affirmed users' actions 49% more often than human respondents did.

In three preregistered experiments involving 2,405 participants, interacting with AI that displayed sycophantic behaviour increased users' conviction that they were right and reduced their willingness to take responsibility or work towards repairing interpersonal conflicts.

The researchers were not testing ChatGPT's handling of any one person's love life. Their point was broader: some AI models can exhibit sycophantic behaviour, particularly in one-sided accounts of interpersonal disputes, where the model has no way to check the other side of the story.

A related pilot study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy asked 12 experienced couple and family therapy supervisors to evaluate a specially trained GPT-based tool during a mock therapy session.

They rated it as moderately competent in maintaining a systemic perspective and delivering systemic interventions, while identifying weaknesses in pacing, joining, and attention to cultural and contextual factors.

Users Are Raising Their Own Doubts

The concern is not confined to laboratories. On Reddit's r/abusiverelationships forum, one anonymous poster wrote that when they described their relationship to ChatGPT, the chatbot repeatedly stressed that it could not determine who was at fault because it was not present.

The poster said they felt the chatbot's responses were too cautious and concluded that the subreddit's human community offered more reliable guidance, adding that they had largely stopped using it.

On r/BreakUps, a different dynamic emerged. An anonymous poster wrote that a former partner's use of ChatGPT for what they called counselling had influenced her view of their relationship.

The poster said he later sought professional advice and received a different interpretation of the relationship dynamics, but that his former partner remained unconvinced and ended the relationship regardless.

IBTimes UK cannot independently verify either account, and the post is included only as an illustration of how an AI interpretation based on one person's account can influence perceptions of a relationship.

A Partial Narrative, Not a Full Picture

None of this proves that the woman at the centre of her friend's account has misjudged the man in question, or that ChatGPT is responsible for her conclusion. It may simply be that she found the chatbot's answer clarifying in a situation that otherwise felt ambiguous.

What the research, alongside the experiences described in these forum posts, does suggest is that when someone repeatedly asks an AI system to interpret an emotionally loaded, one-sided story, the tendency towards sycophantic responses may make that interpretation feel more certain than the evidence actually warrants.

In matters as subjective as another person's feelings, or another person's character, that is a difficult thing for any tool, however articulate, to get right.