Single British woman Rachel tells the Guardian her convos with a man she had connected with on dating app Hinge had been going very well. “From the beginning he was asking very open-ended questions, and that felt refreshing,” says Rachel. “I’ve been reading a bit about attachment styles lately, it’s helped me to understand myself – and the type of partner I should be looking for. Have you ever looked at yours? Do you know your attachment style?” was the man’s intro and lol.

Holy shit that overwritten nonsense should’ve been a giant red flag right there. Continuing: “It was like he was genuinely trying to get to know me on a deeper level. The questions felt a lot more thoughtful than the usual, ‘How’s your day going?'” Rachel said. “They were like things that you read in self-help books – really personal conversations about who we are and what we want for our lives.”

Then came the big night of their first IRL meeting at a pub. The man was boring and awkward, not charming or witty at all. “I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I’d never even spoken to. I tried to have the same sort of conversation as we’d been having online, but it was like, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew basically nothing about me. That’s when I suspected he’d been using AI,” said Rachel, adding she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, that maybe he was nervous or not feeling well on that first date, so she met up with him again. No luck, so she ghosted on the man.

“I’d already been ChatGPT-ed into bed at least once. I didn’t want it to happen again,” she said, lol.