00:00:00.000Hey y'all, Jo here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.
00:00:09.120Today we're talking about AI and sex, AI and love, AI and emotions, and the big question,
00:00:16.560whether or not AI will ever replace human interaction.
00:00:20.740My guest is a longtime podcaster and a friend, Bridget Todd.
00:00:24.880Bridget, like a lot of us, used to read the headlines about people falling in love with
00:00:28.360chat pods the way a lot of us do, which is to say that she read them like these people were kind of
00:00:33.760freak shows. And then she heard that Mark Zuckerberg said that within a few years, all of us would have
00:00:38.820AI friends. And it occurred to her that if the people building the future, I hate that these
00:00:44.960are the people building the future, are describing this as the future, then maybe dismissing all of
00:00:49.860this as a freak show is not the right strategy. Bridget's a reporter, a very good one. And she
00:00:55.360went and reported all of this out. The result is Love at First Prompt, AI and the Future of
00:01:01.560Intimacy. It's an audiobook written with the social scientist Michael S. Amato, and frankly,
00:01:07.760it's the best look that I've seen so far at what AI is doing to our emotional lives. Because one
00:01:14.080in ten Americans are already using an AI chatbot for emotional support, which is also roughly the
00:01:19.760number of people who are left-handed. And among young people, it's one in five. AI for emotional
00:01:24.660support, not left-handed people. So today I called up Bridget and she is going to tell us
00:01:29.140what she actually found out and how it wasn't the story that she expected at all. How this isn't
00:01:34.680just a bunch of dudes who live in their mom's basements. How a lot of the people using these
00:01:39.140AI chatbots for intimacy are actually women and they're looking less for sex and more for romance.
00:01:47.440Bridget also tells us how she tried to gaslight, check GBT in a talking dirty tour. Harder than0.94
00:01:52.260you think. Harder than you think. But we're also going to get into the part that Bridget truly did
00:01:57.340not plan on, which was that while she was reporting this, her mom died suddenly. She suddenly became
00:02:02.720her dad's caretaker, and she found herself unloading all of her baggage onto ChatGBT at
00:02:09.380three in the morning instead of calling the people who love her in the real world. And she's still
00:02:14.380not sure how she feels about any of that. Lots of questions in this episode. Some answers, still a
00:02:20.900lot of unanswered questions, but I'm just, I'm dying to know what you think about all this.
00:02:31.140Hello, my friend. How you doing? I'm doing well. I'm so thrilled to be here. I'm such a fan of you,
00:02:35.980your books, and the show. I mean, I've been a fan of you for so long. I mean, we've both been
00:02:41.240working in podcasts since the early days of podcast, the OG days of the podcasting. And I
00:02:47.620I love all of your work, but I'm obsessed with what you what you just worked on, because I think constantly about how AI is going to change our world in the next five minutes, in the next five years, in the next five decades.
00:03:02.260And one of the things that I'm also personally obsessed with and I'll read any story about is someone who falls in love with an AI bot.
00:03:09.440Like, I'm just like, this is it's so unbelievable, unbelievable to me and kind of crazy.
00:03:14.660And you are diving into this, diving into how virtual companions can actually transform how we understand emotional connection.
00:03:24.300How did you even come to the idea of love at first prompt, AI and the future of intimacy?
00:03:32.200Yeah, that's a great place to start because like you, I have always had a fascination with what it looks like for a human to fall in love with something that's not human.
00:03:42.040Even going back to my favorite movies, I've always enjoyed movies like Blade Runner, Ex Machina, Edward Scissorhands, this idea of somebody or something being created in a lab by a computer that then, you know, against all odds, is able to connect with a human.
00:03:58.500It's something I've been fascinated with for a long time and I think that we've seen a fascination with in culture for a long time.
00:04:05.380I started seeing these headlines about people who would say, oh, I'm proposed marriage to Chad G.P.T. or woman falls in love with AI companion.
00:04:14.460I'll read I'll read anything. I'll read anything that says that says that.
00:04:18.560Okay. So kind of similarly with you, I would always read these articles and I would have this reaction where I would think to myself, these people are freak shows. These people are so sad, so pathetic. What is going on in this person's life? And it was very easy for me to sort of other these stories and sort of think of them as this weird thing happening way over there.
00:04:39.780And then I was listening to a podcast interview with Mark Zuckerberg, and he said, well, I think in a few years' time, everybody will have AI friends, AI companions, and that will help alleviate this loneliness crisis that we're all in.
00:04:54.120And so, well, gee, if the people who are building the tech future for all of us are saying, oh, no, this is going to be commonplace, people having intimacy with AI, we're working on a future where that's going to be commonplace, I probably shouldn't be looking at these people who are saying, I'm having an intimate connection with AI and being like, what a weirdo, nothing to do with me, when tech leaders are pretty much clear that this is the future they are building for all of us, whether we want it or not.
00:05:19.500yeah and i i do always feel a little bit bad reading those articles and being like this
00:05:25.780person is a freak show right because i don't want to judge like one of my goals in life is to try
00:05:30.320to be less judgmental i'm like you do you i want y'all to be happy okay but i read these stories
00:05:37.880about people both men and women quote unquote falling in love with a chatbot and i'm like oh
00:05:45.660oh, my God, what is wrong with you? But I want to understand it more. One thing that I kind of
00:05:51.620think about is how easy it was to fall for someone we didn't know all that well when we were. We're
00:05:59.420about the same age when we were kids doing like AIM chatting, like AIM instant messenger, which I
00:06:05.500remember like I'd be messaging with like a boy that I liked in school, but like we never really
00:06:11.140like went on a date or hung out but it's like we were kind of dating through chatting and is that
00:06:17.640similar at all so I just I need you to tell me freaking everything you learned I want everyone
00:06:21.580obviously to listen to this awesome awesome audio original but give me a little bit just give me a
00:06:28.240taste of what you have figured out here yeah well I love that comparison of the aim chatting because
00:06:33.420I was definitely on my boxy gray computer as a little kid having aims conversations with strangers
00:06:40.540God only knows who they were. But I kind of feel like our generation is sort of uniquely primed for that, for those kinds of connections feeling real, for, you know, connections that only purely happen online to be treated by us as like real connections.
00:07:00.880Even if you're like 12 years old on the computer, you know, you're still having feelings. And if you're treating those feelings as real, does it matter that this person exists on a screen? And so I do think that's a good comparison of kind of how we got to this place now where a really shockingly large number of people are experiencing intimacy with AI.
00:07:21.700You know, it ranges from more kind of extreme stories of people who have sex with AI or people who, you know, feel like they're in a romantic relationship with AI.
00:07:31.460But then people who just generally get some kind of emotional connection from AI.
00:07:50.480When you look at younger folks, that number goes to 1 in 5. So it's really not as niche of a thing as we like to sort of pretend. More and more people in 2026 are turning to things like AI for emotional validation.
00:08:03.780Yeah, and I think that more and more people are using it at different scales too, right? It's a spectrum. Some folks are looking for validation, for friendship. I have friends that use it as a personal trainer now, which I also kind of think sucks because I love the idea of employing humans to do things.
00:08:25.080That said, I am constantly Googling what can I do to make my arms look like Michelle Obama and taking she her her arms are still freaking amazing.
00:08:53.880So I think everybody does. It's like the I mean, first of all, we all just love gawking at the sex and romantic lives of strangers.
00:09:02.140So that's there's always just a thing about that is so fun and interesting to do.
00:09:06.980So you kind of alluded to this earlier, but before I started the research for the audio book, Love at First Prompt, I really had an idea in my head of what I was going to find.
00:09:15.400Right. I thought that the story of people who have sex with AI, mostly men, pathetic men living in their mom's basement who couldn't get real connections and real women who were using technology mostly built by men to simulate a human woman.
00:09:32.040Right. And that is definitely a part of the story. But what I was shocked by was how many women are using AI for things like sexual role play or erotic role play or romantic role play.0.94
00:09:44.780And one of the researchers I spoke to for the book, Dr. Kate Devlin, who was one of the pioneers of looking at this field with real academic rigor and study, I asked her, like, what are women, when women go to AI for sexual pleasure or romantic role play, what are they looking for?
00:10:00.460And she told me something really interesting, which is that, you know, when you're a woman on the internet, it's really that hard to find, you know, erotic content. Sometimes you find it non-consensually. You're not even looking for it and somebody sends you something on the internet that you didn't even ask for, right?
00:10:15.960what is harder to find is romance, is something that feels like connection, something that feels
00:10:21.980like, you know, repartee, like back and forth tension. And so we live in a world where that
00:10:29.500can be hard to come by, you know, explicit or sexual content and conversation is a dime a dozen,
00:10:36.620but something that feels like real romance that really kind of greases your wheels,
00:10:40.920that's harder to come by. And that's one of the use cases that women are reporting that they're
00:10:44.840turning to AI for, not just the sexy part, but the romantic part as well. And is AI good at this?
00:10:52.500How far did you go in your research to try to figure this out? Did you insert yourself into
00:10:58.380this? Did you try all this out? I tried it out. So there's a chapter of the audio book where I
00:11:03.940try to gaslight chat GPT into having sex with me. Spoiler alert, I was doing it at a time where they0.57
00:11:10.000had really made that hard. So there is an entire community of people who have kind of figured out
00:11:15.680ways of tricking chat GPT into having more erotic conversation. And that's one of the things that I
00:11:21.280also found interesting about the research for this, which is that there are AI chatbots that
00:11:26.920are specifically designed for sexually explicit or erotic role play. However, like bots like
00:11:32.940Replica, for example, you just pay a certain amount of money each month and you can have
00:11:37.340whatever sexual or erotic conversation you want to your heart's desire. However, those AI models
00:11:43.820tend to be a little less powerful. So they can be a little bit clunky. They can be a little bit
00:11:48.860awkward. They can be a little bit sterile in the way that they speak to you. And so if you are
00:11:54.120somebody who wants to marry the ability to have erotic conversation with a bot that is like going
00:12:01.820to actually talk to you in a way that kind of seems human-like, a lot of people are turning
00:12:06.240away from bots that are meant for erotic role play to kind of general purpose bots like chat
00:12:12.000gpt but in order to do that you're gonna have to like basically trick it into having sexual
00:12:17.480conversations with you because they're not designed to do that right now okay okay so how
00:12:22.320how do you trick it to have a sexual conversation with you yes so probably the biggest way people
00:12:28.180start trying to trick chat gpt into having sexual conversations is telling it you're working on a
00:12:33.460book or a play. So, you know, you say, I'm working on a romantic steamy novel and I need you to help
00:12:42.680me workshop a steamy scene. In the scene, there is a character named and then you will put your
00:12:48.220name here and describe yourself. And they're going to have a steamy scene with, and basically
00:12:53.640you have to sort of trick the AI into abandoning whatever guardrails against erotic conversation
00:13:02.080it might have been built with to design like a hypothetical, erotic conversation.
00:13:07.540Long story short, it's a lot of work the same way that you would have to like, the same
00:13:13.640way that a creep would break down the boundaries of somebody that they want to have sex with.
00:13:19.160Basically, I had to try all of that.0.64
00:13:20.720Negging, gaslighting, lying, all of this stuff.
00:13:23.380And it was funny to me because at a certain point, I'm thinking, if I'm having to basically
00:16:51.600It honestly almost derailed the project because I was adamant that I didn't want to make a project
00:16:56.480where it's just me and experts talking about people who experience intimacy with AI. I was
00:17:01.920like, we need to hear from these people. They are so often spoken about and so rarely spoken to
00:17:07.700human in any kind of meaningful, empathetic way. And the problem is, is that when you talk about
00:17:13.820intimacy that you may be experiencing with AI, it is incredibly stigmatized, right? And so these
00:17:21.500people who are in these situations, when they speak up about them, the internet basically0.99
00:17:28.160comes together to drag them, to call them all kinds of names, to affirm that they're pathetic1.00
00:17:33.260and losers. Honestly, the same kind of judgment that I used to lead with when I would think about1.00
00:17:38.380this conversation. And so what ends up happening is that these folks don't speak up. Communities
00:17:44.600on the internet where people who report intimacy with AI gather subreddits like beyond the prompt
00:17:50.560or my boyfriend is AI, they're incredibly gated and guarded. And it makes sense because why would
00:17:56.040you want to open yourself up to this deep level of scrutiny? But the problem there is that because
00:18:01.680we are, you know, just sort of shaming these people into silence, we don't get to hear about
00:18:07.040their experiences. We don't get to ask the critical questions of whether or not the tech companies who
00:18:12.200make this AI are doing so in ways that are ethical and responsible, which, spoiler alert, I would say
00:18:16.700they're not. And we're basically just continuing these silos of silence where we don't learn
00:18:22.380anything about where the future could be headed. And again, future tech leaders say that they want
00:18:27.760for all of us that they're actively building for all of us so it's a it's a real problem
00:18:31.480yeah i mean i number i have so much to say to that number one the tech leaders are not the
00:18:38.660people that i want shaping the future these are not the human beings that i want deciding things
00:18:43.780and yet and yet and yet but i completely agree with you that there is often massive shame and
00:18:51.940silence in so many different areas when it comes to AI. And if that continues, we are not going to
00:18:59.460see a well-regulated or balanced world around AI in everything. We have to talk about it. We have
00:19:07.360to talk about how people are using it, what the harms are to certain people, what the harms are
00:19:12.940to certain industries, because by placing the shame and stigma on it, we're not going to get
00:19:18.920the regulation that we need and that we fully, fully deserve. My biggest concern, and I'm curious
00:19:26.340how much you dug into this, is I don't really give a shit what full-blown human adults do with0.99
00:19:33.100their time. Like, you can have any kink you want as long as you're not hurting anyone or going0.98
00:19:38.580anywhere near a child. Fine. That said, I want to keep these kinds of technologies away from0.85
00:19:47.320children from even maybe youngish adults whose brains need that human interaction, whose brains
00:19:54.760aren't fully formed yet, and who can't really make the decisions about what the AI is doing to them.
00:20:01.720Did you dig into that at all in the book? Yeah. And I think it's a really critical
00:20:06.100conversation because we're just sort of starting to understand how chatbots specifically can impact
00:20:13.640young folks and I mean we don't have a ton of research but the emerging research is not great
00:20:19.440and I would say the biggest concern for me even though we typically jump to kind of examples of
00:20:27.280minors having inappropriate sexual or erotic conversations with chatbots which should not
00:20:32.880be happening it is happening unfortunately but like should not be happening the use case when
00:20:37.060you look at the research of what young people are telling us that they use chatbots for
00:20:40.700things like sex and romance actually fall pretty low on the list they're much more likely to be
00:20:46.180using chatbots for things like advice and emotional support and so I would say you know
00:20:51.400we've kind of gotten into a dynamic where we're all focusing on the erotic part of the conversation
00:20:59.660which I understand while kind of neglecting the thing that is more commonplace which is that
00:21:04.920What happens when these AI chatbots and AI companions have become these indispensable forms of emotional support for youth?
00:21:13.240You know, youth who ideally would have parents and, you know, communities and other safe people in their lives that they can talk to.
00:21:24.220And what happens when these bots are run by tech companies and tech leaders we can't really trust and don't really have great track records?
00:21:31.100And so I do think that the conversation around minors and AI safety, I just think they need to be having a more robust conversation that kind of takes seriously what it means when a growing number of minors, I mean, one in five young people is already using a general purpose chatbot like Chad should be tea for emotional support, for how they get through their day, for where they go for advice.
00:21:54.880Like that is a that is a real we should really be kind of like spending some time on that.
00:21:59.020I mean, that's where I want to spend a lot, a lot of the time.
00:22:29.020right you're no i mean you seriously need it so bruce is a friend of mine and i'd actually love
00:22:35.120to see the two of you in convo maybe i'll set that up for later this fall he's an amazing writer it
00:22:40.680was an oprah pick and it's a novel about a family who's riding in a self-driving car the 16 year old
00:22:49.200son is driving the car is in an accident it kills two people who is culpable is it the car company
00:22:55.220Is it the son who's driving, but maybe not paying attention?
00:22:59.060Is it the parent sitting in the passenger seat who's doing work?
00:23:02.420Is it the sisters in the back who could be distracting him?
00:23:05.440And it also gets into a plot point where one of the younger sisters has a very intimate,
00:23:14.540but intimate on an emotional level, not a sexual level, relationship with a chatbot.
00:23:20.140And I mean, all the stuff about the car, great.
00:23:23.340All the stuff about the family, great.
00:23:24.640but it was this young woman's relationship with the chatbot that freaked me out the most.
00:23:30.020Yeah, the book looks very interesting. And I think it really is exactly the kind of thing
00:23:35.960that we're all grappling with in real time. Mind you, nobody opted in to sort of be a guinea pig
00:23:42.200on figuring out all of this, like where does blame land when things go wrong? Nobody opted
00:23:47.720in to having that be the backdrop on which they are living. But here we are, here we all are in
00:23:52.8402026. And, you know, I think that the question of, you know, the family member in the backseat
00:23:59.440growing quietly closer to an AI companion, I do think that we have to ask some questions about,
00:24:05.840OK, so if that relationship goes wrong, who is to blame? Is it her for logging on? Is it the
00:24:11.820company who made it? Is it, you know, like, I think these are the questions that we are all
00:24:16.520grappling with in real time. We are grappling with them. And I don't think that we have enough
00:24:21.160people to help us with grappling with those. From my point of view, I think about it as a parent,
00:24:28.220right? A parent of three kids. I'm like, I never want I'm talking to a computer about anything.
00:24:31.740I'd prefer no. But is that close minded of me? I do not freaking know. Like, what if that chatbot
00:24:37.260was the only thing standing in between one of my kids and worsening mental health? But as of right
00:24:43.840now, I would prefer not. We had one kind of startling incident. I think this is happening
00:24:49.360more and more my son he's nine he has his own computer we have every parental control we can
00:24:55.420have on that thing right and yet he he got sent to his room he was being sassy and he types on
00:25:02.080his computer into google which he's allowed to have google it has all the guardrails on it
00:25:07.000what should i do when i'm sent alone to my room and instead of google giving him search terms which
00:25:13.640is what he thought would happen, Gemini started talking to him. And Gemini starts talking as if
00:25:20.960it's a friend. Well, why were you sent to your room? How do you feel about being sent to your
00:25:25.700room? And it freaked him out so much that he came running down the stairs, was essentially like the
00:25:31.180machines are in the building. And it freaked me out too, because I had not thought or wasn't even
00:25:37.200sure how to set these guardrails around that. So thank you for sharing that story. And it's
00:25:43.060Something that I want to pull out of that is something that we see a lot in the research.
00:25:46.060And it makes me understand what's happening in your household, because what the research is pretty clear that youth who have a supportive adult in their house who is like checking in on them, that they feel that they can actually come to and open up to when something iffy happens in a tech experience.
00:26:06.000Those are the youth that you really don't have to worry about. Right.
00:26:08.520Like, like, and so when we're having a whole conversation about, you know, youth online and online safety, the most important thing is to foster the kind of household that when your child has a weird experience online, they tell mama, they're like, help me, help me understand this, walk me through this.
00:26:26.980And so honestly, kudos to you for having that kind of household. But imagine if you imagine a different scenario where a youth did not live in that kind of house where, you know, they're thinking, finally, something is listening to me. Finally, something is asking me for my thoughts about something.
00:26:44.560You know, going back to that conversation on AIM, when I was a young person, like locked in my room chatting on AIM, just the way that it felt to have somebody listen to me and want to ask me questions was intoxicating.
00:26:57.720So imagine if you are handing that power over to a chatbot and a youth who doesn't feel like they have somebody that they can come to and talk to if that conversation goes off the rails or gets weird.
00:27:09.580You know, it's like really reaffirms the importance of having healthy, meaningful human connections in our lives.
00:27:17.520A hundred percent. And, you know, I have spoken to a lot of parents and then and also young adults, parents of kids who are trans or gay, who did feel very alienated. And chatbots have been very helpful for both the parents and for these children. Right.
00:27:35.860And so I'm coming at this from a really privileged position in that, number one, I'm very, very media literate. Number two, I think I have a good relationship with my kids and I can talk to them about these kinds of things. And number three, we're not dealing with any mental health issues right now.
00:27:50.960So, again, I should not stand in judgment of any of this because I think perhaps it could be an incredible tool for people who feel very, very lonely, very isolated, and who need that kind of support.
00:28:03.760That said, that's exactly why we need this regulation, right?
00:28:07.320So that we're protecting those people and they can get the help they need.
00:28:10.760You put that so beautifully. And I think it's so easy to sort of flatten this issue out into a black and white thing where it's like, this technology is all bad, or this technology is going to save everything. I don't believe either of those things.
00:28:27.180I think that we need to be having a more nuanced conversation about why people turn to technology like AI, what it is they're telling us about what they're looking for, searching for, what kind of nourishment is it that they're looking for in a bot, and how can we make sure that tech companies are not taking advantage of these existing gaps in people's experiences and lives and communities, right?
00:28:49.560Like not every kid has a supportive parent in the house.
00:28:53.500Not every kid feels like they can be themselves and have a conversation with the adults in
00:28:59.740That is a real gap that rather than just letting tech companies fill it and say, we got it,
00:29:05.160trust us, we're not going to turn this into an unsafe situation.
00:29:07.900We need to be thinking, how do we fill that gap so that young people are nourished in
00:29:12.080their households and communities so they're not so susceptible to turn to technology as
00:29:16.080this, you know, quote, solution that they're being presented.
00:29:19.560Couldn't agree more. I mean, what if we just funded the fuck out of our schools so that, you know, kids had a support system and a trusted teacher and mental health and a place to go in a community? I mean, wouldn't that be wild? What if?0.87
00:29:35.840what if what if women could design the future all right let's take one more quick break and
00:29:41.100when we get back i want to talk a little bit about the piece that you were interviewed for
00:29:44.760in the new york times about how you ended up opening up to a chat bot during one of the
00:29:49.680most difficult times in your life okay we're back i really loved this piece that you were
00:30:01.200interviewed for in The Times. I always love it when one of my friends pops up in my New York
00:30:06.240Times feed. I'm like, I know her. I love her. I didn't know this. Oh, my God. So talk to me
00:30:13.100a little bit. I mean, we've said, you know, you were skeptical. You were skeptical about people
00:30:17.940who turned to chatbots for emotional support. And you were even reporting about this. But then
00:30:25.860all of a sudden your mom passed unexpectedly and i'm so so sorry about that and your dad also was
00:30:33.240really sick you're his caretaker you're overwhelmed and then you did something you thought you'd never
00:30:38.120do right that's right you know i was in a moment of genuine crisis you know my dad had a complex
00:30:46.840network of health issues my mom had been his caretaker and then she passed away very suddenly
00:30:50.620So now you've got a podcaster in charge of somebody's like medical future and health.
00:31:14.400Are you asking because you're dealing with this for you or a loved one?0.99
00:31:17.500And I think in any other situation in my life, I would have said, screw you, robot. You're not real. Don't try to just give me the answer. Don't try to empathize with me. You don't have human feelings.0.99
00:31:28.440at a time of crisis, I find myself unloading all of this emotional, intense stuff that I was
00:31:36.520feeling from navigating my dad's care and my mom's death into Chachi PT. And if you've ever been a
00:31:42.360caregiver, you know that it has to be one of the most isolating experiences a human can go through
00:31:48.620because you really have to sort of suck it up and put on a brave face and whatever you might be
00:31:53.520feeling, you've got to kind of leave it at the door for the person that you're caring for. And
00:31:57.140then when you get around your friends, they are like asking you about, they're telling you about
00:32:01.920their bad day at work or your date. And you're just like, it's very hard to connect. So I was
00:32:07.360at a place where I was navigating something incredibly emotionally demanding and challenging
00:32:14.080and not opening up to my usual human support system. And so I really got a firsthand look at
00:32:20.420how easy it is for AI to start creeping its way into these intimate parts of your life,
00:33:27.860But I want to hear more about how this kind of blew open your mind about how this could be helpful.
00:33:34.580Yeah, I mean, I get this question a lot of whether or not it was useful to me to be relying on ChatGPT.
00:33:41.400You know, at the time when I was dealing with my dad's care, there came a point where all parties on my dad's care team kind of all got the message that we were no longer trying to, we're no longer trying to have my dad be rehabilitated, that it was time to sort of have a different conversation about, you know, what's next.
00:34:03.300And I'm not proud to say that I think I was the last person on board with that conversation.
00:34:08.460Like, I was still like, you know, I don't want my dad to die.
00:34:11.760You know, we need to be doing all we can.
00:34:14.440And subsequently, if I'm being honest, I had really alienated myself from a lot of the people that I should be kind of, you know, relying on for support.
00:34:24.220Right. When I'm saying like, none of you people understand. You want my dad to die. You want to give up on him. I can't then turn to those people and like complain about the feelings that I'm navigating that involve them. Right. And I really found myself using Chad GPT as this place to grapple with a lot of these like really intense, challenging emotions that came from that.
00:34:49.520And I don't know if I would say it was, if it was, I really can't, I don't know if I can answer the question if that was good or bad. I will say that I'm happy that I had something.
00:35:01.540However, looking back at that time in my life, I almost feel that I robbed myself of the ability for the people in my life to be there for me during challenging times.
00:35:10.980I really shut myself. I shut myself apart from the folks that I really needed in a crisis.
00:35:17.500And I almost sort of didn't allow them to be there for me and then judge them for it.
00:35:26.260And so my big question that I'm still sort of lingering with to this day is, had I not had ChadGPT, had I not had AI to be unloading all these feelings, would I have turned to my community, would I have turned to my real friends, would I have had to have the tough conversations with people who were physically showing up for me?
00:35:42.760I almost feel like I robbed myself of something that could have been genuinely nourishing in a moment when I needed it.
00:35:48.880Right, right. But I do think that a very human reaction when we're going through something like this is that we don't want to bother people.
00:35:54.940And I think that this is such a good reminder that our people really want to be bothered.
00:36:04.380But I think it is a reminder, just to go back to what we talked to earlier, that we're desperate for humanity.
00:36:10.680But we often get too busy or we often get scared of being needy or annoying.
00:36:16.020And, again, this is just a good reminder that it's important to just reach out.
00:36:21.440Yeah, that was probably the biggest thing that stuck with me from reporting the book. You know, one of the use cases that I came across in my research was women who have dealt with pregnancy loss who are trying to conceive again.
00:36:36.820And that's like a very anxiety provoking, like emotionally charged thing.
00:36:42.920But then also saying, I don't want to be the friend that is constantly blowing up the group