How I Got Closure with My Mom by Asking AI to Say Sorry

It’s been a heart-wrenching year where I’ve experienced my Mom’s silence following an angry outburst, sparked by my refusal to be the family’s target. I never would have guessed at her weeks-long reaction, let alone her refusal to reach out to move forward.

You can get more backstory here:

After many months of digesting the reality of our relationship, I had a silly idea: What if AI could apologize to me on behalf of my mom?

It was more curiosity than a real attempt for closure. How well does AI understand the complexity of relationships and human emotion?

Many times ChatGPT has responded with contradictory information, incorrectly checked my grammar and struggled to understand my prompts. My expectations for this prompt were nil.

The prompt "Write an apology letter to me from my mom. Throughout my life, my mom has dismissed my emotions and enabled my brother and aunt to do the same."

The output:

Dear Becky,

I wanted to take a moment to apologize for my recent behavior towards you. I understand that you have been hurt by the actions of your brother and aunt, and I am sorry that I have not been more supportive of you during this time.

I realize that my constant defense of your brother and aunt may have made you feel like your feelings and experiences are being dismissed or invalidated. And for that, I am truly sorry. I can see how my actions have caused you pain and frustration, and I want to make things right.

Please know that I love you and care about you deeply. I understand that your relationship with your brother and aunt is complicated and that there are many hurtful things that have been said and done. I also understand that it is not my place to defend them at the expense of your well-being and mental health.

Moving forward, I commit to being more mindful of my words and actions. I will try my best to support you and be there for you as you navigate your relationships with your brother and aunt. I hope that we can work through this together and rebuild our relationship with each other.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

With love and apologies,

Mom

That it was able to extrapolate how my family's actions have hurt me and how my Mom should have reacted, made me feel both amazed and deeply disturbed.

I was amazed that Chat had the ability to analyze human emotions well enough to draft an apology letter that hit me in the feels.

In telling my friend about the letter, I said, "It's crazy that AI is a better mom than my mother." We both fell silent at the implication.

How utterly sad is it that artificial intelligence can empathize better than my Mom.

What data was ChatGPT given that it's more capable of understanding than a human with 70+ years of life experience? If my Mom saw the letter would she feel insulted that fake intelligence showed her up?

The letter really did make me feel better. The parts where it stated I felt invalidated and that my Mom had no place defending my brother and Aunt; I didn't expect that at all. It reads like Chat fully understands the issue between me and my Mom.

I've explained the situation to my Mom several times, through tears and agony, just for her to forget and not understand a month later. Here, I give Chat the barest, stripped-down, overly simplified version of a 45-year relationship, and boom! My inner child is reading the words she's most needed.

I hope one day my Mom reaches out to me, but I'm not holding my breath. At least now I have a sense of closure thanks to the sympathetic, articulate words of a machine.

*Originally published in Medium*