In February, the TikTok creator Brittany Panzer posted a video over five minutes detailing the unraveling of her friendship. There was no disagreement, no blowup, not even ghosting. Panzer felt she’d lost her friend to ChatGPT.
At first, Panzer’s friend used artificial intelligence for relationship advice and casually mentioned that she’d consulted the technology in conversation. But over time, Panzer suspected her friend was questioning her own emotions, and perhaps the counsel of friends too; eventually, she hardly recognized the person on the other end of the phone.
“Rather than talking to friends, she talked to ChatGPT,” Panzer says in the video. “After all, in her mind, it was able to do what no human could: be an objective best friend in her pocket.”
Increasingly, people are outsourcing the basic functions of friendship to AI, and getting reassurance, advice, and camaraderie from the likes of ChatGPT, Replika, Claude, and Copilot. According to a 2025 scientific paper, people commonly interact with AI to address loneliness, to self-disclose about mental health and personal issues, and to garner emotional support and empathy. It’s easy to see why: The technology is always available and generally says what people want to hear. But once you’ve become accustomed to on-demand validation, the appeal of human conversation — with its mess and imperfection and two-sidedness — can start to wane.
Although they may mimic human responses, AI chatbots are not, in fact, human, and a lot of humans find them off-putting. Who wants to give a friend a pep talk only for them to turn around and ask ChatGPT to hype them up, or weigh in on a friend’s important life decision, just for them to say, “Let me see what Claude thinks”? If you suspect your friends are getting their friendship needs met from chatbots, there are ways to reclaim the relationship from the tech abyss: by embracing your value as a real person with authentic fondness for them.
Determine the motivation for using AI for friendship
In order to separate friendship from the functions of chatbots, you need to first understand why your friend is utilizing them in the first place. What’s going on in their life that would drive them to confide in AI? Maybe they’re struggling at work and are embarrassed to fill you in on all the details, or they don’t want to burden you by rehashing the same fight they had with their partner yet again. It could also be easier to type out their feelings in the moment rather than wait until you have free time to hop on the phone. And perhaps the most boring but likely option is that conferring with AI is their new default for matters personal or otherwise.
“The reality is, we need imperfect, complicated, and messy human relationships in order to learn, grow, and thrive.”
Naomi Aguiar, associate director of research at Oregon State University Ecampus
This doesn’t mean you’re falling short as a friend. These models are designed to copy human speech patterns and hook users with the emotional support they get from them, Amelia Miller, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, tells Vox. It can be hard to compete with a technology being described by the CEO of Microsoft AI as “superhuman.” Human beings are, at times, clumsy with their words, say the wrong thing, and get annoyed when they themselves don’t feel sufficiently supported.
“People are limited in ways that idealized AI chatbots are not,” Naomi Aguiar, the associate director of research at Oregon State University Ecampus, tells Vox by email. “We may want perfect friendships, and AI companions might convince us that they are indeed more human than human, but the reality is, we need imperfect, complicated, and messy human relationships in order to learn, grow, and thrive.”
Sure, they may be performing some of the duties of friendship, but AI chatbots aren’t going to stand next to your friend at their wedding or drop off soup when they’re sick. While the jealousy or frustration you may feel watching this play out is very real, what you’re envious of is not, and no matter how good technology gets, there will always be a need for actual friends. “This is really just an information repository,” Skyler Wang, an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University, tells Vox. “It’s a relational agent, but it is not a human person.”
Then, see where you can fill in the gaps as a friend
Once you’ve zeroed in on what value your friend gets from a chatbot, you can use that to inform how you show up for them. In addition to her research, Miller works as a human-AI relationship coach and finds her clients turn to ChatGPT for motivational pep talks: You’re going to crush it today, you’re going to rock that meeting. “The kinds of platitudes…that feel kind of meaningless coming from a machine, and yet people are finding super valuable,” she says.
In this case, you might consider ways to offer that same support, which hopefully will mean more to them if it’s coming from you. This requires a bit of forethought: remembering what responsibilities and stressors a friend has on their plate and taking action to let them know you’re thinking of them. Something as simple as a text message has the power to make someone feel considered and appreciated. “If you are a friend who fears that your friendship is being outsourced to [a] machine, you can just use that as a call to action to be an even better friend to this person who might be turning to chatbots,” Miller says.
People might be drawn to chatbots because they’re always available, and there can be an impulse to be similarly accessible. However, you don’t need to pressure yourself to check in all the time or answer texts immediately; instead, just try to be there in ways that are meaningful. You can tell friends outright that you’re here to help them talk through their issues with the in-laws or work drama.
“Maybe they feel like they have limited access to you, but maybe a lot of these ideas are distorted,” Wang says. “Maybe in fact you are available, you’re willing to talk, and maybe they just feel like, Oh, I don’t want to burden you…and in fact, you want more of that kind of burden, because for you, that’s a worthwhile time and energy investment to your friendship.”
Talk to them directly about their chatbot habits
If you feel like your role as a friend is being diminished, it’s worth mentioning. You could say something like, “I want you to feel like you can come to me about anything, but lately I’ve noticed we don’t have that same openness. Is there anything you want to talk about?” It’s always a good idea to use “I” statements in moments like this. “I would try to keep the focus on myself and my own experiences of what is going on, and avoid placing shame, blame, or judgment on the other person, and I would try to approach the conversation with openness and curiosity,” Aguiar says.
You can choose whether you want to address their AI use outright based on how you think they’ll respond. If there’s a chance they might feel judged and attacked, it’s probably best to avoid mentioning it. But it can be helpful to approach the topic openly and in a way that positions the use of chatbots not as something that’s negatively impacting your friendship, but an element that’s changed the nature of how you communicate. You can also make a breezy quip about their chatbot habits if you observe them utilizing it, Wang says. “Be like, ‘Wow, is this really happening? You’re asking chat after I just gave you what I thought you might need?’” he says. “Then just unpack that interaction.”
The goal isn’t to guilt your friend into confiding in you, but to remind them you’re always there for them — maybe not to the extent that ChatGPT is, though. But you have something a chatbot will never have: a deep, shared history with them in the real world.
