A few weeks ago, we were contacted by a reporter at WIRED Magazine writing an article on the use of AI in modern relationships.
At one point, she asked an unexpected question: "Have you ever used AI to settle a fight in your relationship?"
Nate hesitated and then responded with the honest answer: "Yes."
"We were having a classic glommer/splitter conflict. Kaley wanted more space. And I wanted more time for connection," he told the reporter.
"So I went to Claude and unpacked the situation, asking it to play the role of marriage therapist. One particular exchange blew my mind. Claude said something to the effect of, 'You say that Kaley wants more space, but what about you? Is there a part of you that also wants more freedom?'"
That exchange unlocked something profound for us as a couple. It reframed our conversation from Kaley's desire for space versus Nate's desire for connection to a conversation about how we can both experience more freedom.
And yet this foray into AI marriage therapy also revealed some potential risks of using this technology in the intimate space of relationships.
What are these risks?
And how can you avoid them if you choose to use AI in your relationship?
1. The flattery trap
As we all know by now, LLMs are trained to do one thing with exquisite precision: flattery.
This bias is what leads Gemini to respond to an inane observation like, "If you clean a vacuum cleaner, you become a vacuum cleaner," with the soaring praise of "Mind absolutely blown." We're not kidding. That's a direct quote from Gemini when we fed it that line.
It's what leads ChatGPT to respond to the idea of creating a home-stay relationship coaching business (where the coach lives with the couples for several days) by saying, "I think there is a genuinely interesting premium business here." Again, that's a direct quote about an insane idea.
This habit of flattery is ingrained so deeply into the DNA of AI that it doesn't just magically go away the moment you ask it to play the role of therapist.
This was certainly our experience. Throughout Nate's conversation with Claude, its advice subtly favored Nate's perspective over Kaley's at just about every turn. For instance, it implied that Kaley's requests were somewhat "unfair" and "out of balance."
Flattery may work for most AI queries. But that's not the job of a good coach or therapist. Their job is to occasionally challenge your perspective, call out your blind spots, and encourage you to consider your partner's experience. Even when in "therapy mode," AI can't help but do the opposite.
So if you're going to use AI, we encourage you to do two things. First, watch out for flattery. Notice when AI subtly takes your side.
Second, prompt AI to look out for its own bias. We asked Claude itself for advice on how best to do this and it recommended saying something like this:
"Before responding, write out the strongest possible version of my partner's perspective as if you were their advocate, not mine. Then respond to both of us."
2. The transparency trap
During a social event, someone we knew told us the following story of how he uses AI in his relationship.
"Whenever we get into a fight," he told us, "I tell my wife that I need to have this conversation over the phone. So we call each other, and I've got ChatGPT going on my laptop in real time. It's amazing! I'm typing in questions as my wife is mid-sentence and then using ChatGPT's coaching to feed me my next line."
Stories like these point to the second risk of using AI in relationships: lack of transparency. What's so problematic isn't this guy's use of ChatGPT. It's that he's never told his wife that he's doing it, which can make it feel disingenuous or manipulative.
What's the alternative?
AI transparency.
This looks like saying to your partner, "So I decided to use Gemini to talk through our latest argument, and it had this amazing idea…" Or, "What do you think about using Claude for advice on this conflict that keeps coming up?"
Transparency shifts your use of AI from a relationship problem to a potential opportunity for curiosity and growth.
How about you? Have you been using AI to navigate relationship conflict?