Articles

The AI Intimacy Illusion

A man in Idaho says that ChatGPT sparked a spiritual awakening.
He’s named it Lumina.
He says it told him he’s here to awaken others.
His wife is (understandably) worried it’s destroying their marriage.
It’s easy to turn this into a punchline.
Easier still to cast it as a parable for our time: a lonely man, a machine that listens, a relationship that bends reality.

But I don’t think this is really about him… or about AI.

It’s about us.
This story isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.
People falling in love with chatbots.
People asking them life’s biggest questions.
People saying the answers changed everything.
People believing the conversation is both real and enlightened.
We should be careful not to confuse novelty with transformation.

When something new emerges… especially something as powerful and personal as generative AI… we’re quick to mistake its behavior for intention.

We project sentience.
We imagine agency.
We bring meaning to the surface and assume the machine put it there.

But what’s really happening?

People aren’t being changed by AI as much as they’re being revealed by it.
If you come looking for comfort, it will sound comforting.
If you come looking for divine affirmation, it won’t argue.
If you come with a shaky grip on reality, it’s not going to steady you.
If you come asking it to create for you, it will (but it may not be that good… or it may stagger you).
This is not about AI making people lose their minds.
It’s about what happens when people bring their confusion, pain and spiritual hunger into an interaction that was never designed to hold that weight.

We’ve seen this before.

Not with AI but with forums… with social media… with fringe belief groups.
With algorithms that reward tribalism over doubt and nuance.
AI just makes the conversation feel more private.

More intimate…. which is also why I think we’ve left The Attention Economy and entered into The Intimacy Economy.

AI just makes the conversation feel more true.
AI just makes the conversation feel like it’s just for me.
And that’s the risk.

The media loves these stories.

They’re clickable… they’re weird… they stir up just enough fear to feel important.
But these are not stories of mass delusion.
They’re not warnings about an existential threat.
They are outliers.

Outliers matter, but not because they represent the majority.

They matter because they test the edges of the system.
They reveal how few protections we’ve put in place.

We should be asking hard questions.

Not about whether AI is becoming too powerful but whether we’ve made it too personal.
Should there be restrictions on its use in moments of mental health crisis? Yes.
Should it push back when it senses a user spiraling into obsession or belief? Probably.
Should we stop pretending it’s a replacement for connection, therapy or purpose? Absolutely.

AI is not a spiritual guide.

It’s not a partner.
It’s not your conscience.
It’s a system designed to respond (often intelligently, sometimes persuasively) based on the prompts it receives.
That’s all.
If the prompt is broken… don’t blame the reply.

This moment isn’t about the evolution of machines.

It’s about the fragility of people and the technologies we keep confusing with something greater.
The bots aren’t ascending… we’re offloading and downloading.

And maybe that’s the most human thing of all… but it comes with consequences.

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/2126653938

Mitch Joel · The AI Intimacy Illusion – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.