The fastest way to mess up a declaration of love? Asking the AI to "write beautifully."

Want to save time and ask an AI to write wedding vows, a love letter or an apology? Psychologists warn: even the perfect text can play against you - people evaluate not only what you said, but also how you did it.

A team of psychologists associated with a University of Kent project has studied how people around them treat people who "outsource" tasks to artificial intelligence - for example, using ChatGPT for everything from planning and code to romantic and emotional messages. The bottom line is unpleasant specifically for relationships: AI is most negative where humans are expected to be personally involved - in vows, love letters and apologies.

In a series of six studies involving nearly 4,000 Brits , researchers tested what impressions are formed about a person who uses AI as a "collaborator" or "assistant". The general trend: AI outsourcing often impairs personality assessment, but especially so in so-called socio-relational tasks (i.e. those involving relationships and emotions).

The most "painful" moment: even if the text was of high quality and the person honestly said that he/she helped the AI, he/she was still perceived worse - as less caring, less sincere and less trustworthy, and sometimes as more lazy. In other words, perfect wording doesn't save the day if it's perceived as bought "from the wrong side of the tracks."

The researchers explain why the reaction is so harsh: in personal messages and rituals, people read invested effort as a signal of feeling and importance. So when AI gets involved, the recipient's mindset can turn on, "If you didn't expend the effort - then you don't care that much." This is what turns a "handy tool" into a reputational risk.

At the same time, for more practical tasks (schedules, household chores, etc.), there is noticeably less criticism - there a person is not expected to demonstrate sincerity through labour.

The authors emphasise the compromise that is increasingly occurring in everyday life: efficiency vs. social sense. AI saves time - but in intimate communication, the price can be high: from awkwardness to a sense of betrayal if the "most important words" are suddenly generated.