The AI Breakup: It's Not You. It's Me.

The growing use of ChatGPT has expanded well beyond its original purpose as a tool -- some people are turning to it for companionship, even emotional support. It's part of a broader pattern: technology gets used in ways nobody designed it for. As AI adoption accelerates, we're in something like a honeymoon phase, with companies rushing to integrate it -- both to capture the efficiency gains and to avoid falling behind -- without fully working through the long-term implications.

AI tools can foster a real sense of connection, and some users have gone further still: forming emotional attachments, even romantic feelings, toward their chatbots. Many are looking for companionship, affirmation, or therapy-like support. But without true context or empathy, the responses tend to lack depth and emotional warmth underneath the fluency.

Investor tools have adopted AI at every stage of the investment process too -- Fiscal.ai (formerly FinChat) and Acorns among them -- even as a recent MIT study reporting that 95% of AI pilot projects fail has sparked investor anxiety and cast doubt on AI's role in business. The report was primarily about startups, where failure has plenty of causes that have nothing to do with AI specifically, but it fueled skepticism anyway among people already doubtful of AI's fit inside existing business models. The real question is why those pilots failed -- and that's the part corporate leaders should actually be worried about.

We're curious -- how have you been weaving AI into your own decision-making toolkit? Does the MIT study make you want to pull back, or pause, before incorporating AI further into your operations? Leave the decision-making to Osparna -- we're here to help.

Sources: Kahn, J. (2024, August 27). An MIT report that 95% of AI pilots fail spooked investors. But it's the reason why those pilots failed that should make the C-suite anxious. Fortune. fortune.com/2024/08/27. Shuttleworth, C. (2025, June 19). Man devastated after robot 'girlfriend' resets and forgets him. Bristol Post. bristolpost.co.uk.