Bumble BFF Question
This story is part of a series. Click here to read The Prep, Days 1-2 and Days 3-4.
Day Five: Thursday
Making New Friends
I check in on my Bumble BFF. I have new matches, so I ask the AI to create a new greeting with a “fun, interesting question.” ChatGPT’s idea of a killer convo starter is to ask people what fictional world they’d like to vacation in.
Gag, but I’ve pretty much lost my capacity for shame at this point, so I send this message to five people. Then, out of curiosity, I ask ChatGPT to answer its own question. “It’s going to be Harry Potter,” I think to myself.
Called it.
A message comes through from Courtney: She wants to know my favorite local bakeries. I ask ChatGPT to answer the message, specifically requesting that it cite a bakery from San Diego, and it just makes up one that doesn’t exist. I send it anyway.
Courtney invites me to join her at a bakery. My robot heart melts.
Planning My Outfits
Day Five Outfit
When I don today’s outfit, my roommate tells me I look like a cartoon character. To be fair, I’ve never figured out the right way to style these oversized glasses, so I can’t blame StyleDNA for having trouble, too.That said, it’s way too hot for this coat, and I wish the app offered a way to organize looks by season.
Food Shopping & Meal Prep
Day Five Meals
I haul myself back onto the wagon and fix breakfast according to my meal plan. It’s delicious, but the omelet is massive, so I save the fruit salad as a snack for later.
Omelet
Rather than making a caprese salad with toast, I cut out the middleman and just make a caprese sandwich. This is my favorite kind of lunch: something tasty and satiating that I can toss together in under 10 minutes. If the past five days have taught me anything, it’s that I am simply not a meal prep girl. Making enough for leftovers, sure—but spending hours roasting veggies I could sautée or air fry in half the time? No, thanks!
Bell Pepper
Later, I reluctantly stuff a pepper with veggies and more beans. I have historically loathed bell peppers, but when I take a bite, it tastes… dare I say… fine? Mostly like nothing. This week has changed me, after all.
Exercise Plan
Day Five Exercise
ChatGPT wants me to engage in an outdoor activity, so I set out on a long walk, which is like hiking but the only nature is dogs.
Curating a Music Playlist
Spotify New Saves
I count the number of new songs I favorited on Spotify this week: six. Not bad for someone who’s streamed Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl” more than 300 times.
The Takeaways
Did letting AI take over make my life easier? No—not for me specifically, anyway.
I don’t normally structure my meals and workouts so much, focusing instead on eating intuitively and building movement into my social life with activities like climbing gym hangouts and hot girl walks with my friends. I did come away inspired to eat better breakfasts (ChatGPT is pretty good at breakfast!) and make more grocery lists, but following a rigid meal and exercise schedule was too much, too fast.
If I were a busy parent using Chat GPT to help me plan meals for the week, I might input a prompt like this.
But if I were a busy parent trying to streamline meal planning, inputting my family’s dietary restrictions and preferences into ChatGPT and having it spit out a grocery list could be an amazing time saver (tip: it can also organize the list based on aisle). Folks dipping their toe into working out regularly, or who aren’t comfortable in a gym, could refine the AI’s simple exercise plans into something super useful.
While StyleDNA isn’t smart enough—yet—to align with my tastes and deliver many outfits I actually like, I appreciated the ease that came with having my ensemble assigned to me each morning. Future improvements to the technology might prompt me to redownload the app. And speaking of intelligent tech—Xavier the AI DJ is awesome. I’ll continue using it to discover new tunes, and I’d love to see Spotify add features like the ability to request a specific, consistent vibe (for occasions when I’m, say, throwing a summer dinner party and don’t feel like curating a playlist).
Sure, completely normal way to have a conversation.
One thing I’d never recommend using AI for? Human interaction. Just write your own texts, people! And then rest easier at night knowing that, at least for now, not even the smartest chatbot is as good at interpersonal relationships as you are.
Experiment now over, I go to delete my Bumble BFF, but then… I think of Courtney, sweet Courtney who responded to my messages through it all—my soulless photos, my fake bakeries, my exclamation point overuse. I can’t just disappear on her.
I write her a message with my own human brain, explaining that I’ve been a robot this whole time. I tell her that I understand if she never wants to speak to me again, but I would really, really like to be friends, because she seems like a good person who didn’t deserve to be on the wrong end of my technological experiment. And then I wait.
I can only hope she offers me something distinctly human: grace.
Follow along on her weeklong journey here: The Prep, Days 1-2, Days 3-4.
