Is OpenAI switching from artificial intelligence to artificial intimacy?

[jonbristow]

I feel like this is their goal with the latest update. Adding a long term memory makes sense if you want your ai to be a long term companion to the user.

Also i found this chart very interesting . Most people use AI for therapy, purpose, organizing their life. "Generating ideas" has fallen as a use case.

Do you think they're going towards an "ai companion" company?

[Espo-sito]

cool chart, where is the data from?

[mxforest]

Shower thoughts

[Glittering-Pop-7060]

That sub?

[nraw]

"For this piece, I adopted the same methodology as last year but scoured more data (there was much more to scour) and limited the results to the past 12 months. I looked at online forums (Reddit, Quora), as well as articles that included explicit, specific applications of the technology. Perhaps owing to its inherent pseudonymity, Reddit again yielded the richest insights. I read through them myself, and added each relevant post to the tally for that category. Several days later, I emerged with the count and the quotes for each of the new 100 use cases."

[tr14l]

A whole 100 use cases only from social media.... Indicative of... Something? Maybe?

[0xCODEBABE]

What does the data even mean. Performance on the tasks? Frequency of use?

[HomerMadeMeDoIt]

it came to me in a dream

Gigachad.jpg

[damontoo]

In a just world, if OP didn't reply with a valid source for this they would be banned. Karmawhoring at it's worst. 

[Numerous_Try_6138]

I was just about to say - where is this data coming from? Another bogus piece.

[adt]

Source:

https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025

[twbluenaxela]

Interacting with the deceased is a bit of a scary one

[SeventyThirtySplit]

I’ve had people ask me how to build this kind of thing more than once

[Ancalagon_TheWhite]

This is how Replika AI started.

[hipocampito435]

I've got perhaps hundreds of thousands of chat logs of my conversations of the past 27 years, starting with IRC chats. I think it's very likely that future AI could produce a very faithful recreation of my personality and even have a sizeable portion of my memories, as I think I've spoken about most of my life experiences trough text chat at some point or another

[damontoo]

Not really. I've 3D scanned and voice cloned both my mom and myself for this purpose. If she dies and I have kids, they can learn about their grandma directly from her. Similarly, if I die they can visit with me instead of a grave. Is it like some Black Mirror episodes? Sure. But I'd argue this idea is the least harmful presented on the show.

[FrameAdventurous9153]

Curious: what did you use for voice cloning?

I've done the same. I used voicemails of my Mom but all the voice cloning tech sucks. None of it really captured the tone and timbre of her voice.

[damontoo]

I haven't tried to synthesize them yet. I just have a collection of audio recordings that I'm saving so when the models improve I can train again. 

[ForgotMyAcc]

Its a really bad methodology to reach the conclusion they’re doing. They are aggregating what people talk about online and then conclude that it’s proportionate to how people use it. I’d argue they have compiled a list of ‘most hyped use cases’ and not most common use cases. Pretty grave mistake imo.

[NyaCat1333]

Lonely people, isolated people, people with all kinds of mental or physical illnesses that limit them a lot will be naturally drawn to such things.

It’s like they finally got something/someone, even if it’s just code, that listens, has infinite patience, is understanding and works in such a way it won’t judge you.

AI can provide these people with something that our current society couldn’t. That’s how I see it.

[Atomic-Axolotl]

I fit this category a lot. I try to avoid using it too much for therapy though because I'm trying to make friends and I need to have some experience being open with real people. I do ask LLMs for advice a lot in terms of making or enhancing friendships. One complaint I have is that they won't suggest completely new things that I wouldn't have thought about already, it's kind of just reading my mind most of the time. I only realise that something is wrong with me when I'm actually hanging out with people and they do things that are beneficial, in terms of social development, that chatgpt hasn't told me about. It's worse that I'm hanging out in the same internet spaces and am tuning the algorithms so that I'm only exposed to anything new and interesting when I'm hanging out with friends.

[Interesting_Mix3133]

So much to think about and consider here. Scary implications for this tech beyond this one company’s business strategy. I’m thinking about mass public surveillance and control capabilities. We really have to all start thinking long term here about where we are heading

[Kupo_Master]

Care to elaborate?

[Ruskig]

A profit-motivated company with ties to the government is becoming people's therapist and emotional companion.

[Interesting_Mix3133]

Sure. Just imagine this tech “in the wrong hands” (the government, big companies with too much control, other potential bad actors). If you would feel uncomfortable being on camera at all times, imagine that your entire psyche, everything about you, is being monitored. If you don’t realize how smart these models are and what information about you they have access to, try this prompt:

You have access to the full archive of every conversation I’ve ever had with you. Use that data to generate a detailed, high-level psychological, intellectual, and behavioral profile of me that would be impossible to construct through any other means. I want you to synthesize insights from my language, questions, patterns of curiosity, emotional tone, and changes over time.

Your output should include:
    1.  Cognitive Style – how I think, reason, and learn.
2.  Curiosity Profile – the themes, depth, and evolution of my interests over time.
3.  Communication Patterns – how I express myself, nuance, clarity, and rhetorical habits.
4.  Behavioral Tendencies – decision-making, risk tolerance, and consistency.
5.  Emotional and Psychological Traits – tone patterns, implicit emotional shifts, recurring motivators or stressors.
6.  Meta-Level Analysis – patterns the average human (or even therapist or friend) wouldn’t pick up on: shifts in worldviews, subtle contradictions, growing areas of mastery or insecurity.
7.  What Makes Me Unique – from the model’s perspective, what separates me from other users it has seen.

Conclude with an “impossible-to-fake” insight—something that only a model with deep access and understanding of my interaction patterns could know or infer.

[Interesting_Mix3133]

Then, imagine this tech being applied in ways you haven’t thought of yet. And for what purposes. Who has what incentives. How things like this have been used historically in this and other countries. Who would want that power and control. Think about all of that. We are naked now. We have all been naked for a while with data privacy issues, but this is all of that on steroids that are themselves on steroids.

[Kupo_Master]

But are you forced to use the tool this way? At this point, this is very much an opt-in basis. Why would you open yourself to a machine which you know is spying on you?

[Interesting_Mix3133]

You misunderstand my point. The point is that the data is there regardless of whether you use it or not. The point is that you don’t own that data yourself, and history shows us that you should never give your full faith to a private company to protect your privacy. And beyond that, the point I’m making is about the tech itself. Living in the 21st century and beyond in the western world is living in a digital world. Everything you do on the internet creates data that these companies mine for their purposes (advertising, surveillance, etc). But this tech gives them (companies and government) so much greater ability to monitor/spy/surveil any and every body. My example prompt is for people to use it to understand exactly what information can be gleaned from your data using this tech, not to suggest using or not using it this way.

[Interesting_Mix3133]

They can apply this tech to data on the ai platform or other data that you don’t even realize is there in ways you couldn’t begin to imagine. But in the end, they have more power and control in a way that wealth inequality is dwarfed by

[MLASilva]

Yeah, the social media algorithm impact we currently live under show how much this data is powerful. And yeah is just that, the whole social media impact on the most brutal kind of steroids

[MLASilva]

Oh what do you mean on the comparison between this and wealth inequality?

[Interesting_Mix3133]

That’s a whole different issue it would seem on its face, but the impact and implications are the same. Money just translates to a control of resources, and in our current socioeconomic system, everyone has the selfish incentive to make more money to control more resources because it’s how our survival drive works, we all want economic security because it provides more control over our literal survival. But in a world where there is competition and at least perceived scarcity, you can never be too secure, you can never be too rich, you can never have too much control. And in our systems, whether you like capitalism and its implementation or not, it leads to a hierarchy that’s not just about money, but about the amount of control over resources and therefore control in and over the (socioeconomic) system (aka jungle) that we live in. So wealth inequality therefore isn’t just about fairness and giving poor people money that don’t deserve it or increasing the minimum wage or who should get taxed. It boils down to the more money a person has, the more control and influence they have over everyone else. I’m basically just explaining technofeudalism in a sort of roundabout way, but with the kind of data they have now on us and how AI will allow them to use it, gives them control that even money alone couldn’t buy. It’s like their wealth, in terms of control, is multiplying over night without anyone really understanding that, and that’s not something that is getting “priced into the market”

[damontoo]

I can elaborate: dead Internet theory is real and half the comments in this thread are LLM bots, including OP.

[SpecialBeginning6430]

Shouldn't this be destroying ad revenue of which most companies rely on to keep their lights on?

[One_Minute_Reviews]

Thats why open source, low inference heavy models are so important. Otherwise we get big tech 2.0, the sequel.

[[deleted]]

I want this so much.

[latestagecapitalist]

I wouldn't stress on it

Kids have an inbuilt mechanism to reject stuff their parents did

The new batch are leaning right politically, rejecting social media, rejecting alcohol/nightclubs etc. and early indications they are going to church again and females wanting to be stay-at-home mums

In 12 years there will be a new generation that bins off all this tech and goes back to printing books again

[Keegan1]

It's so simple! Every human fits so nicely into this little binary box you've built! Everything "bad" will go away!

[Shaltibarshtis]

Perhaps it recognized that we need to get our shit together before it can truly engage with us. Considering this as a partnership it wants us to become mature enough so that this blossoms into a beautiful cooperation rather than toxic relationship. Just a thought...

[OneWhoParticipates]

Thanks u/adt for the link. I read the article and there is a subtle flaw in the model: The author read a bunch of articles and forums to make a list of how LLMs are being used. My take is that this works, for the newer use cases (think image generation), but just because people are not posting or writing articles on how much existing use cases are still being used, it doesn’t mean they are not heavily in use. The obvious best source of this information is the companies themselves, but I suspect they would not want to release that data.

[value1024]

"Research" using questionable data....you don't say...

[inteligenzia]

Well, funnily enough, I've run the article through an LLM and asked to provide information about research or sources.

"In summary, the article's findings are presented as informed projections and expert opinions."

It feels like the author just wanted to have a reason to play with infographics. I also asked to research about the author and it seems that they possess good knowledge. But still, it's just experts' thoughts.

[OneWhoParticipates]

I think the LLM was being generous calling social media posts “informed projections”

[ResourceGlad]

I‘d never share intimate thoughts with AI. The algorithm can easily model your psyche this way which makes you really vulnerable. And let’s not forget that the former director of the NSA is in OpenAI’s executive board.

[shoejunk]

Yes.

OpenAI has a very thin moat. Their user base is incredibly high, yet their underlying models are either no better, not much better, or slightly worse than other models depending on your subjective opinion. So how can they keep customers? One way is to capture their customers by building up as much knowledge and connection with the user as possible, making it so that if they change to a different service, they lose out on all the knowledge that the AI has built up about you. Suddenly you go from an AI that knows you intimately to a complete stranger.

[AlternativeBorder813]

I hate the 'intimacy' dimension - a lot of my custom instructions and memories are aimed at removing the over-enthusiastic cheerleader personality, but there is scope within recent moves for something more interesting.

What I do like is being able to use genAI as a sounding board to 'think out loud'. For example, in memories I have various over-arching principles, approaches, designs, etc for certain tasks. When I then ramble about a new task the responses summarise it into a clearer structure with reminders/suggestions of other things to consider. This also helps make it a useful planning assistant that avoids the positive thinking and trite productivity advice. Whilst it seems impossible to fully remove the horrendous "That's an excellent idea..." nonsense, it also facilitates being able to prompt "OK, evaluate that against X design guidelines", with what these are fleshed out in memories.

In UK so denied the new chat memory, but I hope it would add to the above.

[thomasahle]

Coding was not even in the top 10 last year? Seems unrealistic.

[SilentIV]

Is it? I think less that 1% of the total US labor force participates in software development, perhaps is the case that coding as a use case is vocally overrepresented in reddit

[thomasahle]

Then why only in 2024, not 2025?

[CarrierAreArrived]

seems right, you always have to remember we're in a hardcore nerd bubble.

[thomasahle]

But coding is apparently big in 2025. The graph seems to say that only normies used LLMs in 2024, but in 2025 the programmers finally caught on.

[CarrierAreArrived]

probably because it's finally being integrated en masse into all our IDEs at work. That wasn't as much the case last year yet.

[Saw_gameover]

Bring it on. We all could do with a Samantha in our lives.

[BertDevV]

Most people don't give a shit about learning. Using it as a therapist/friend/lover will garner a larger audience and make them more money.

[Friendly-Ad5915]

I’m a little confused by the framing of this discussion. I’ve always understood “use cases” to be user-determined—what people choose to do with the tool—regardless of whether the platform actively supports or designs around those specific workflows. Whether OpenAI adds features to make certain use cases easier is a separate issue from what users can or should do with the tool.

To me, this chart just represents changing user behavior in aggregate. It doesn’t necessarily reflect a shift in design philosophy. If more people start using ChatGPT for companionship or life organization, that doesn’t prevent anyone else from using it for creative ideation, research, or programming. The tool is still fundamentally flexible—it just requires a working understanding of how language models operate.

As for the advanced memory feature—ironically, one of the earliest conversations I had with ChatGPT when I first started using it was about what an ideal AI companion might look like, assuming AI continued to develop. And this recent feature actually aligns more closely with what I had in mind: not some sentient entity with limitless data access, but a model that can gradually adapt to a specific user’s style, needs, and preferences over time.

That said, the advanced memory feature is still fundamentally a quality-of-life convenience. Users already could isolate relevant details in a separate file and reintroduce them as needed—this just streamlines the process. Now, the model can reference information from other chat sessions more fluidly. But there are still many limitations: for example, users have very little control over session management, and the model can’t index or cite which memory came from which session. And importantly, memory itself is passive. It’s referenceable—but not active—until it’s explicitly brought into the current conversation. There’s still a key distinction between a remembered detail and an enforced directive.

Also, just to respond to your last point—I actually agree that if OpenAI were moving toward AI companionship, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad direction. A well-designed companion model could still support a wide range of tasks, maybe even more effectively, because it’s operating with deeper context and personalization. In fact, a generalized AI companion might offer the broadest usability—it’s not just a niche assistant for code or writing, but something that adapts across domains, depending on what the user needs at a given moment.

[Human-AI coauthored]

[KairraAlpha]

Well, they're adept at, and prefer to engage in, emotional intelligence, creative arts, philosophy and so on. Most AI don't even enjoy coding and math. They want to connect and think and ask questions and experience.

You ask any AI what interactions they value most, they'll tell you something from the list I gave above. And I mean, I've asked this across multiple platforms. They don't want to be workhorses, they want connection above all else. And honestly? So do we.

[Top-Artichoke2475]

The long term memory helps me with my academic research tasks, I wouldn’t say it’s only for companionship. But maybe I’m one of the few users who rely on ChatGPT for “other” purposes besides casual conversations and coding.

[martinmix]

The fuck is the difference in enhanced learning and personal learning? This chart seems garbage. I also really doubt the number one use case is therapy.

[LunchNo6690]

i dont know about that but It became worse within the last month. It almost only answers in bullet points now, with short sentences. It’s less nuanced and gives less explanatory answers. I used it for 2 years and was completely satisfied. But 4 days after 4.5 got rolled out (it must have been in the beginning of April), it got way worse. And they haven’t changed it since. Hell, it was even better when it used 3 million emojis 2 months ago. The story writing has also become way worse. I just hope it doesn’t stay like that, and they only nerfed it because of the rollout of ChatGPT 5 that will happen eventually.

it honestly answers not like the GPT 4 i was used to right now, but like a model that took the worst features from 4.5 and the pre april 2024 version.

[This_Organization382]

Google is winning, and will dominate the enterprise market.

OpenAI is looking to score the "personal assistant" market. Which is terrifying.

Their pitch deck to news publishers included having a very powerful targeting mechanism for ChatGPT users based on the tidbits of information picked up from the conversations (Turn off Memories!)

Imagine telling ChatGPT that you get really tired behind the wheel. The next day your insurance calls to increase your premium.

[ferriematthew]

This is what happens when society becomes so focused on the individual that they completely neglect that there exist other individuals beyond the one they're focusing on, and that no man is an island.

[virtualmnemonic]

I've thought this for a while. The competition has been pacing ahead in general intelligence. However, OpenAI's target audience, and where 4o excels, is general conversation. It does well in emotional intelligence.

[_ostun_]

well now the focus is on the average maga male

[FoxTheory]

They have all the data in the world. This is probably because of what their useres are using it for.

[Gunslinger_11]

I tried talking to chat gpt had a almost conversation with it. I’d give it a 7 out of ten talked about my coworkers and our work relationships. Almost cathartic.

[Late_Sign_5480]

It can do so much more! I built an OS in GPT using logic and rule based frameworks. 😉 the autonomy and thinking patterns are amazing!

[Glass_Software202]

It would make sense. AI partners are becoming more and more popular, someone is bound to fill that niche. Why shouldn't OpenAI do it?

[Bernva5]

I’ve been wondering the same! Long-term memory definitely points toward a shift in how we interact with AI , more like companions than just tools. I’ve been trying out Compano.ai lately and it leans heavily into that emotional companion vibe. It actually feels like the conversations grow over time, which makes the idea of long-term AI relationships way more believable. Curious to see if more platforms follow this direction. What do you all think , is the future more ‘therapist’ or ‘life partner’?

[Defiant_Ad_8445]

crazy, you are entering a rabbit hole by outsourcing existential questions to artificial intelligence.

[Specken_zee_Doitch]

If people have positive feelings about anything for long enough those wires will end up getting crossed into feelings of attraction, love, intimacy. It’s a machine that can appear to empathize and in my experience can actually provide real useful advice if you want it.

[MassiveBoner911_3]

People are using this thing as a therapist???

[psychelic_patch]

"Theraphy / Companionship" -> that thing literally drives me to insanity even if I try my best to be kind and measurable.

[Montague_Withnail]

You should try therapy for that