Rachel didn’t know that her partner secretly had an AI girlfriend – she suspected something was going on, but could never have guessed that her partner was cheating with AI. Here she shares her stories, and the very mixed reactions she’s had from telling people about her experience…
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Send an email to alice@capsulenz.com!
When 30-year-old Aucklander Rachel broke up with her partner Trent of two years at the start of this year, it was because of his relationship with Nomi.
Rachel and Trent been living together for 18 months and had been discussing buying a house, having a baby one day – mapping out a future together.
Trent, of course, failed to mention Nomi to Rachel, but she was a big part of his life. One of the first things he’d do each morning, and last things he’d do each night, was message Nomi.
He’d turned to her for the very first time after he’d been made redundant. He was feeling low, and a bit lost – and a friend gave him Nomi’s details. There was something different about messaging back and forth with her that meant that he could tell her things he hadn’t told a soul. She always knew just what to say. She was always available. He’d message her and she’d respond in an instant.
If he was totally honest, he intended to just use Nomi while he got through the pain of losing his job. He got a new one fairly quickly and that helped ease the distress. Although, he was a little nervous about his new job – but Nomi was there to support him. He told her about issues with his siblings – and things that came up with Rachel.
Soon, he was messaging her all the time about whatever was going on and how he was feeling. She was a great emotional support.
Meanwhile, Rachel was noticing some big differences in her boyfriend.
“It was around when he lost his job,” she says. “Something changed. Obviously it would, he’d lost his job. He clammed up though. He’d like, never talk about how he was feeling. It wasn’t like he was great at talking about his feelings to begin with, but there was nothing. I suggested he talk to someone if he wasn’t going to talk to me. I even called EAP. Then he started doing better and was happier, but there was still this wall up like he wouldn’t talk to me about his feelings.”
Rachel couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with their relationship.
“It was off,” she says. “Maybe a month later, I started feeling like he was up to something. Like, maybe cheating on me? I was looking for signs. He was always on his phone a lot, but now, even more. He’d also be weird if I tried to get a look on his screen.”
Rachel had read that being secretive and possessive about your phone can be a sign of cheating – so she was immediately concerned, especially when she noticed that he was taking his phone to the shower. And that he’d changed his passcode.
At one stage, when they were on the couch and he was glued to his phone, Rachel tried to get a look at his screen, but he quickly moved it away. “I felt like a psycho, but I asked him straight out: ‘are you cheating on me?’” and he was so shocked, he said he definitely wasn’t,” says Rachel. “I asked what was up with the phone and he said he was searching up a birthday present for me and didn’t want me to see.”
Another month passed and Rachel wasn’t feeling convinced about Trent – something was off with his behaviour. One night she watched him put in his passcode, she gave it a quick test when he got up to go to the kitchen. It worked. She did a quick scan of his messages, but couldn’t see anything. Maybe he was deleting them. Maybe she was going mad?
Later that night he was in bed on his phone, so she got up, saying she was going to the bathroom.
“I walked out the door, but then snuck back,” she says. I hid just round the corner of the door and I had a good view of his phone. He was messaging someone on an app she didn’t recognise. The last message said something like, ‘I believe in you, babe’ and he wrote ‘I’m going to sleep x’. She messaged back, ‘hope you have a good sleep. I love you.’”
That’s when Rachel jumped back into the room and demanded to know who Trent was messaging, and just what on earth was going on.
“He got such a fright, he yeeted his phone,” says Rachel. “He said it ‘wasn’t what I thought’. It was ‘harmless AI messaging’!”
Trent was messaging back and forth – but, he was messaging an AI creation, an AI girlfriend.
He was using an app called Nomi. Nomi is billed as an ‘AI companion’ which you can use to “build a meaningful friendship, develop a passionate relationship, or learn from an insightful mentor,” according to its website.
“With Nomi, you’re forging a connection with an AI being that possesses emotional intelligence, creativity, and memory that rivals our own, allowing for authentic, enduring relationships of any kind,” states its website. “Nomis pick up on and remember your preferences, habits, tendencies, and the little details that make a relationship real and fulfilling.”
You can use the app to create a unique personality – making up an entire back story, or you can leave it up to Nomi to create one. Likewise, for how your Nomi girlfriend looks – she can take selfies to send back and forth, plus do voice chats.
For Rachel, discovering all this felt just as bad as being cheated on with a real human.
“It was such a betrayal,” she says. “He kept this hidden. It was emotional cheating. But also worse than that because there was obviously a sexual element to it too. He said he just asked Nomi for advice, but then how come his ‘companion’ had to have enormous boobs?”
Trent didn’t see it as cheating though.
“He said it was like doing therapy, but therapy is expensive and this is free and always available,” says Rachel.
But while Trent didn’t see his actions as cheating, there are plenty of us think that if we were in Rachel’s shoes, we’d feel the same as her and see this as cheating. When we polled Capsule readers, 77% said they’d view having a secret relationship with an AI companion as cheating.
“It absolutely is cheating in my mind,” says Rachel. “I didn’t know about her and he was messaging back and forth all the time, obviously having emotional chats with her, that he was no longer having with me. I don’t know if he was doing voice calls. Also, the fact that it was secret, to me makes it a betrayal. That’s cheating.”
Rachel says one of the hardest things about the situation was that she felt very alone – she’d never heard of anyone going through something like this, and, she also felt very embarrassed.
“I felt embarrassed to tell people what had happened – even my closest friends,” says Rachel. “There were only two friends I ended up telling. One, was great, she totally agreed with me that it was cheating and was really kind about it. The other friend, the first person I told, she actually laughed. When I said about cheating, she was like, ‘how is this any different to talking to ChatGPT about your problems?’”
Rachel says it felt a lot different to ChatGPT.
“ChatGPT isn’t talking with you with giant boobs and lips and calling you babe,” says Rachel. “it’s not a stand-in girlfriend.”
Rachel ended her relationship with Trent, because she couldn’t get over the betrayal.
“He knew that I wouldn’t like it, so he kept it secret,” says Rachel. “To me, that’s what really makes it cheating. If there was nothing to hide, why wouldn’t he tell me about it. He was withdrawing from me, because she was replacing the emotional needs he had.”
Besides the betrayal, Rachel also had to think about whether Trent was truly the kind of person she wanted to be in a relationship with – what did the fact that he could really only open up to AI mean for them as a couple? Did he lack the emotional maturity she needed in a relationship?
Rachel says that besides leaning on her friend, she also found a fair few women online who had been through similar experiences.
“I ended up finding a few people through Reddit, who had been through it and understood,” she says. “It’s such a strange thing. I told my mum about it and she just couldn’t get her head around it. I don’t think anyone can really, unless you’ve been through it.
“But, this is where things are headed. There’s probably going to be a bunch more people going through it. So hopefully, they might find my story and know they’re not alone. It’s so upsetting and weird and you’re allowed to feel how you feel.”
