Divorce in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence
So, your spouse dumped you for a clanker. Even if that is an exaggeration, the chatbot’s role in ruining your marriage. It is cold comfort that your spouse dumped you on the advice of a clanker, and now neither of you has a human buddy who can treat you to a banana split at Jaxson’s. If you thought cell phones and Facebook were good at ruining people’s marriages, wait until you see what Chat GPT can do. Chatbots behave like an affair partner that confirms the things you always wanted to believe about yourself, and unlike a human affair partner, it does not nag you about when you are going to introduce you to its parents, nor does it ask you for money to help pay its bills. The Internet has ruined plenty of marriages by selling people a vision of reality that they prefer over the mundane lives they share with their spouses. Generative AI chatbots do this especially efficiently, because they quickly tailor their responses to the user’s input. Even though generative AI may change your perception of reality, it does not change the laws governing your divorce. If your marriage deteriorated as large language models gained a foothold in our society, contact a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.
A Chatbot Is No Substitute for a Divorce Lawyer
Yes, you are broke. The civil courts are designed to be accessible for people to represent themselves in legal cases even if they cannot afford to hire a lawyer. You can represent yourself in your divorce case without hiring a lawyer, and some people do. In the old days, people used to download divorce petition forms and fill them out with pen and paper or word processing programs. These days, if you prompted a chatbot to draft a divorce petition for you, it would probably respond with something that looked and sounded like a divorce petition. Relying on computer-generated documents for your divorce case leaves plenty of room for mistakes. It is a better idea to hire a lawyer unless you are getting an uncontested divorce and you and your spouse do not have children together or own your house.
Your Ex’s Online Behavior Can Affect the Divorce Court’s Property Division and Parenting Time Decisions
If interactions with AI chatbots brought out the worst in your spouse and contributed to the breakdown of your marriage, you should tell this to your divorce lawyer. You probably will not have to say it in front of a judge, because most divorce cases do not go to trial. No matter why the marriage broke up, most divorce cases end with the parties’ lawyers negotiating in divorce mediation until they can finalize a marital settlement agreement and, if applicable, a parenting plan. In the unlikely event that you must persuade the court that, for example, your spouse is voluntarily underemployed, you may need to present evidence of your spouse’s online activities.
Contact Schwartz | White About Embracing Real Life After Online Simulations Ruined Your Marriage
A South Florida family law attorney can help you if a chatbot exposed the divisions within your marriage. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
longreads.com/2025/09/25/chatgpt-divorce-breakup/
