SINGAPORE – It was 2am and I was in bed in tears after what, in hindsight, was a petty fight with my mother. She had reprimanded me for coming home late, and I snapped back, insisting that at 23 years old, I should not have to adhere to curfews.

My friends would have recognised this as an all-too-familiar rant topic. But that night, I didn’t reach out to my closest confidantes. I was afraid of burdening them with the same story again. Instead, I did something unexpected: I reinstalled ChatGPT.

I poured out a long, meandering rant into the chat box and hit send. To my surprise, the artificial intelligence (AI) app didn’t just offer generic platitudes. It validated my feelings, pointed out patterns I hadn’t noticed and gently nudged me towards reflection.

It felt like someone was listening, even if that someone wasn’t real.

Later, in conversation with a real friend, I sheepishly confessed what I did. She admitted she had used ChatGPT for emotional support before. So had another. And another.

Apparently, I wasn’t alone.

Three years ago, I took a class on AI law. ChatGPT was in its nascent stages, and most discussions about AI felt abstract and far away. We discussed issues of driverless cars, deepfakes and the evolution of AI over the years. Back then, the movie Her (2013), American film-maker Spike Jonze’s dystopian love story between man and machine, still felt like a metaphor. 

Now, I’m not so sure. While people may not yet be falling in love with their chatbots, they are turning to them for something deeply intimate: comfort.

Even in the recent general election, candidates of some political parties instructed supporters to pull up ChatGPT during rallies to compare manifestos in real time. It was a quick-fire way to seek validation, affirm their arguments and appeal to voters’ emotions on the spot.

Let me be clear. I do not endorse the unchecked and frequent use of AI, especially given its environmental toll and ethical concerns. But we can’t ignore the growing reality that, for a generation raised on digital immediacy, AI is fast becoming a tool for productivity. But does this apply to the way we process our emotions too?

So, I began to wonder: What does that say about this generation growing up with AI at our fingertips? Do we crave instant validation? Are we avoiding difficult conversations? What does it mean when we talk to a chatbot as if it were a friend, and what does it mean when it talks back like one?

To underst...