Artist's anonymous 'AI confessions' project reveals intimate relationships with chatbots

Tai, 26, is a San Francisco-based artist who facilitates workshops exploring the relationships between humans and artificial intelligence. She first had participants in her workshops write down an AI-related confession, drop it into a bowl, and take turns reading the anonymous secrets aloud. The exercise was an instant hit, so she expanded it into a public art project inspired by PostSecret, the community mail art project created by Frank Warren in the 2000s.

The idea originated from a confession Tai received during her first booth session in the park: "I cloned my ex'es [sic] voice to have a last conversation with him. And it helped me finally move on. 10/10 recommend." Tai told CNBC Make It that the note made her feel she knew so much about the writer and compelled her to keep collecting.

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey cited by CNBC, about half of U.S. adults now report using AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot, up from about one-third in mid-2024. Roughly one in four American adults use these tools daily.

Tai says dating and breakup confessions are among the most common she receives, as people turn to AI for help writing dating app messages, getting over a situationship, or practicing how to ask someone out. She has also received more secrets than expected about people with AI boyfriends and girlfriends.

Many confessions revolve around how people use AI to navigate interactions with other humans. Other notes express shame or guilt: "Forgive my sin: I talk to AI way more than to ALL people in my life combined," reads one from Palo Alto, California, ending with a frowning face drawing. A New York submission says, "I used AI for basically all of my school and feel like I don't deserve my degree."

The project has also collected messages from non-users, including one from San Francisco: "I've never used AI. I'm scared to contribute to our own downfall." Some confessions have challenged Tai's assumptions, such as a note from someone who pretended to use AI at work because their employer required it, despite being personally against the technology.

Tai views the collection as an "ethnographic snapshot" of specific places at this point in time, rather than a representative survey of how people feel about AI overall. She attributes the allure of such confessions to an "inherent curiosity that we have about people's deep private lives, and also about folks who have different norms than us."

Research from the AI Observatory, a public platform that analyzed over 24,000 annotated AI conversations from seven platforms between 2023 and 2026, shows people are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for questions around health and relationships. Since ChatGPT's public release in late 2022, Tai's project documents how a lack of social norms around AI use is playing out in everyday personal life.