Navigating Heartbreak in the AI Era: College Student Attitudes Towards ChatGPT-Authored Breakup Letters

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-277-4_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Breakups; ChatGPT; Artificial intelligence; Online communication; College students

Abstract

Recently, the artificial intelligence-driven ChatGPT has garnered global attention, with its applications extending to an array of contexts, including personal and emotionally charged decisions. This study adopted a mixed methods including survey and semi-structured interviews to explore college students’ attitudes towards using AI-ChatGPT to write breakup letters, an emerging phenomenon with implications for interpersonal communication norms, and briefly analyzed the reasons why people choose different online and offline breakup strategies. Surveys (N=154) revealed a near even split between preferences for online versus offline relationship dissolution. In-depth interviews (N=20) provided richer insights, with thematic analysis identifying openness to AI assistance alongside a predominant desire for human nuance in offline breakups. Despite recognizing limitations, some participants were moved by AI-written messages, seeing potential for skills development. With advancing AI language capabilities, continuing research in this domain is critical to inform ethical guidelines and ensure appropriate integration of technology in sensitive relational contexts. As one of the first investigations of perceptions at the intersection of AI, online communication, and relationship endings, this study’s findings contribute valuable baseline data on this evolving dynamic.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiawei Yu
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/09/02
TI  - Navigating Heartbreak in the AI Era: College Student Attitudes Towards ChatGPT-Authored Breakup Letters
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 10th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 150
EP  - 157
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-277-4_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-277-4_19
ID  - Yu2024
ER  -