When your loved one has a new loved one (and it’s AI)

To entertain and distract herself while going through a divorce, Erika Acheson used Anthropic’s Claude to build a bot that generates images based on prompts from her and her friends.

Soon she promoted Claude to an advisory position in her personal life. It didn’t take long for her kids to think she might need a break from her new friend.

These days there are two kinds of people: Those using AI for everything and, well, everyone else.

Super users are contracting out their work to groups of “agents," amping up their productivity. They’re dropping advice from ChatGPT—aka “Chat"—as if the OpenAI bot is their most trusted consigliere, counseling on everything from business strategy to whether you should let your friend get a perm.

Everyone else is wondering if their loved ones may be taking things a bit too far. Maybe some tasks should be reserved for humans. Maybe there’s dignity in that. Maybe some of us like things the way they are!

Acheson says Claude was particularly helpful as she navigated a relationship she suspected wasn’t going to go anywhere. “He was like, ‘Hey I don’t think you’re going to be able to extract yourself from this if you don’t stop talking to this person for a while,’" says the Portland, Ore., resident, who works in operations for a tech company.

When she was later tempted to rekindle contact, Acheson would check in with Claude. Stick to your guns, it told her.

AI hasn’t been beneficial for every relationship.

While her kids watch TV, Acheson likes to tinker with Claude. Her sons don’t approve.

“It’s a waste of her time," says Grayson, 11. “She puts a lot of time into AI just to make boring old pictures."

Anderson, 8, has a different complaint: the technology’s accuracy. ChatGPT couldn’t correctly identify a Pokémon. Another time, Anderson struggled to get it to generate a suitable picture of himself.

“Once I only had one leg, and once I had three legs," he says.

Eric Davich, a startup founder in Brooklyn, N.Y., uses AI for recipe planning, workouts, business strategy and vibe coding with his son. The 42-year-old also uploads recordings of his executive coach meetings to ChatGPT to analyze his progress.

He says the general knowledge it has developed about him has turned it into an effective sounding board—especially when he’s under stress.

“I’ll ask ChatGPT about what I did today and how I felt about it," says Davich. “It’ll be like, ‘Don’t get caught off guard because you’re not making progress on this thing. Remember all the progress you’re making on XYZ.’"

His wife, Julie Davich, is reluctant to use AI, especially for any writing-related tasks. A freelance journalist, she doesn’t believe the technology can replicate her 20 years of professional experience.

Her husband’s use can annoy her, like when she asked him to write an important email to their son’s school. As she read it over, something seemed off.

“I was like, this is basically the same paragraph repeated three times," says the 45-year-old. She asked him, “Did ChatGPT do this?" She says he admitted to it.

“She’s probably not lying," he says. “I don’t remember the specific instance."

She rewrote the email.

Sometimes, he and ChatGPT score points—mostly for utility.

Julie recently spent three days building her own website. Eric then had ChatGPT’s Atlas browser ingest her work and write instructions for another AI tool, Google AI Studio, to redesign it—in less than 15 minutes.

She’s planning to use it as her website, he says. “It felt very satisfying that I found a way to get through to her."

Michael Caruso, 63, recognized early on that his 29-year-old daughter, Anna Caruso Sichenzia, was an AI super user. He knew very little about the technology and had some concerns.

“What I was really most worried about is her getting called out for using something that comes across as inauthentic," he says.

The retired financial-services professional sees it all the time on LinkedIn: professionals having ChatGPT write their posts and people being put off by it. But over time, his daughter impressed him by showcasing AI’s capabilities.

She whet his palate with detailed reports dissecting the southern Italian dialect spoken by his grandmother. Then came help for his new hobby, gardening.

“I needed to know specific details about proper hot-pepper husbandry," says Caruso, who lives in Cos Cob, Conn. “She would come back with everything I needed."

He now brags that his daughter has a “high-powered direct report" assisting her at work. He’s even become quite the ChatGPT user himself. “She has cut the umbilical cord."

Caruso Sichenzia, who works for a venture-capital firm and lives in New York City, often finds herself saying “Let’s ask Chat."

It talked her through fixing a faucet in her apartment, generated advice for a loved one navigating a challenging roommate situation, and came up with vendor prioritization for her jewelry side business. It’s also started to weigh in on various friend-group matters.

“Let’s say I’m with my girlfriends," she says. “Someone’s like, ‘Let’s ask a neutral third party what so-and-so should do about the guy they’re talking to.’"

A male friend recently asked Caruso Sichenzia whether he should get a perm. (He’s been watching a lot of ‘Heated Rivalry’ lately, she says.) She immediately suggested they have ChatGPT generate a photo of him with a perm.

“When it came back, we were like, ‘Oh no no no,’" she says. “It looked like Bob Ross."

Write to Katherine Bindley at katie.bindley@wsj.com