At first she ghosted me, then dropped me with AI. I’m not sure which was worse

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I met my friend in university. We shared a birthday, and we used to share an irreverent sense of humour. Both of us without siblings, there was a kinship. Over the course of 25 years, despite a chasm of several thousand kilometres, we maintained an emotional closeness.

Just a few years ago, during a challenging time in her life, I flew across the continent to tend to her donkeys so she could attend to her own well-being. Highlights of my stay included mucking stalls in the 40-degree temperatures, skirting scuttling tarantulas (it was tarantula mating season) and sweaty co-sleeping with her pit bull. I wouldn’t describe it as a comfortable visit, but I didn’t mind as it was an important one. It was also an escape from my increasingly predictable life and the pandemic lockdowns.

I had always enjoyed my friend’s quirkiness, her love of animals and her life off the beaten path. Recently, this path had veered toward alternate forms of energy healing, including tuning forks and sound baths – not really my thing. A few months ago, I sent what I intended as a playful text that may have been seen as making light of whom she was aspiring to become.

Soon thereafter, I noticed a chill. While I was visiting her city, she was “too drained” to meet for dinner and cancelled our plans. I admit, I was a bit relieved. Our differences were making it challenging to find common ground. Her new interests seemed to have edited out her self-deprecating humour that I had once so thoroughly enjoyed. In turn, I suspect she found me spiritually bankrupt or terminally cynical. Unfortunately, it seems I will never know.

I didn’t want our friendship to end based on a single text that may have been hurtful to her. After a few failed attempts to meaningfully check in, I apologized if my note had landed sideways and suggested a phone call.

In return, I got an e-mail that, at first glance, seemed civil and thoughtful. It thanked me for my apology, said “nothing dramatic” had happened, but admitted that “things had shifted for her” and she “no longer felt a pull to stay in touch.” She wished me well for “whatever is next.”

Part of me admired her honesty. We all outgrow some friendships but sometimes maintain them out of obligation. Maybe this was what “conscious uncoupling” (or in this case, conscious unfriending) is all about? Perhaps her approach had more integrity than my efforts to limp along out of shared history and a sense of duty.

But something – besides my bruised ego – was nagging at me. The syntax of her e-mail was troubling: it was formal and used em dashes that weren’t her style. Her sentiments were expressed in a vague and rather generic manner. Upon the suggestion of a much more tech-savvy friend, I ran this message through an AI checker. While not infallible, it suggested that her message was entirely written by AI.

After a 25-year friendship, it seemed that I had been dumped by a bot.

Let me diverge for a moment. Despite working part-time in academia, I had not yet become “AI-empowered.” Like my long since departed grandmother, who had felt too old to master the VCR, I simply refused to embrace this new technology. I found it creepy, and I wanted to think for myself. My husband, captivated with AI, talked about “Claude,” a seemingly French chatbot whom he thinks to be vastly improving his life. When Eric asked me a question, I would sometimes tease, “let’s just consult with Claaaude …”.

Now, since having been bot-dumped, I’ve been tooling around with AI, myself. My friends and I have enlisted it to produce off-colour songs about each other set to Whitney Houston soundtracks. I also asked Claude for a menu of possible replies to my friend’s message. (None of which I sent.) It (he?) started by acknowledging how painful that message must have been. Claude had been supremely, but eerily, validating. As a therapist, I was scratching my head and more than a little fearful for my job.

When I think about my friend’s goodbye e-mail, I wonder if breaking up with friends is unnecessarily dramatic. Is it more natural to have relationships slowly die on the vine? Should the world spin based on polite white lies and loosely sustained connections or is there a clarity and integrity in consciously acknowledging that we no longer find a connection fulfilling? The effort of grieving may be more than this situation calls for, and yet, I do feel some sadness not only about the loss of the specific connection, but also loss of connection more broadly. I will never know whether my former friend used this tool to help her find words for her feelings or whether she just couldn’t be bothered to speak from the heart.

I am left questioning at what precipice are we now standing with AI, and where will I stand a year from now? Will we be “empowered” or enhanced, or will we have a convenient shortcut that removes the essence from the ways we are meant to relate? Perhaps I’ll just ask Claude.

Julie Goldenson lives in Toronto.