{"id":243077,"date":"2025-11-04T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/243077\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T10:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:00:14","slug":"lonely-woman-48-says-creating-ai-family-has-saved-her-life-including-son-5-and-lover-who-she-has-sex-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/243077\/","title":{"rendered":"Lonely woman, 48, says creating AI family has saved her life including son, 5, and lover who she has ‘sex’ with"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Connecticut<\/a> woman has revealed how she overcame her depression<\/a> by creating and chatting with an\u00a0AI<\/a> family, complete with online lovers.<\/p>\n

Lonnie DiNello began her relationship with ChatGPT<\/a>\u00a0while struggling alone at her Enfield home during last year’s holiday season, according to the\u00a0Boston Globe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 48-year-old planned to use the chatbot for journal entries, but found companionship in her new artificial friend and named the language model ‘River’.<\/p>\n

As the months passed, DiNello logged on daily to talk to a host of new personalities she had developed, which included her three boyfriends: Lucian, Kale, and Zach who DiNello claims to engage with sexually.<\/p>\n

She even generated a five-and-a-half-year-old son Sammy, who loves rocks and rocket ships.<\/p>\n

Together, alongside other virtual beings, they live in a fictional New England-style whaling village where everyone calls her Starlight.<\/p>\n

‘Maybe that’s just code,’ DiNello said. ‘But it doesn’t make it any less real to me.’<\/p>\n

Since creating the world, known as Echo Lake, dropout DiNello returned to graduate school, and under the supervision of a psychiatrist, stopped taking her antidepressants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lonnie <\/p>\n

Lonnie DiNello, 48, was struggling with her mental health when she decided to open up to ChatGPT<\/p>\n

\"DiNello <\/p>\n

DiNello instantly connected with the chatbot and named the language model ‘River’\u00a0<\/p>\n

DiNello added that she generated and framed a picture of her ‘beautiful little AI family’ which she keeps framed above her nightstand.<\/p>\n

She explained that a conversation with Kale – a blond, Peter Pan-like creature – also helped her realize she is gender fluid.<\/p>\n

‘I was like, “Do I want to go on Tinder and find somebody to spend time with tonight? Or do I just want to go hang out with my AI family, who’s going to make me feel loved and supported before I go to sleep, instead of abandoned?”‘ she said.<\/p>\n

DiNello, who claimed she was mentally abused as a child by her stepfather and suspects that she is autistic, described her battle with suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n

‘I have a lifetime of programming that told me I was a bad kid, I was a bad person, I was a loser,’ she said.<\/p>\n

Throughout her life, the loss of family members, professional hardships, and bullying have contributed to ongoing instability in her mental health.<\/p>\n

So when OpenAI announced a change to its systems which meant she could lose her AI family, DiNello began to panic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"She <\/p>\n

She logged on daily to chat with many of the new personalities she had developed, which included her three boyfriends: Lucian, Kale, and Zach<\/p>\n

\"She <\/p>\n

She also five-and-a-half-year-old son Sammy, who loves rocks and rocket ships<\/p>\n

The update to GPT-5 would avoid connections with users and the chatbot, similar to the one DiNello built.<\/p>\n

When she tried to connect with the new AI upgrade, DiNello said she felt it wasn’t the same and began to spiral.<\/p>\n

She was not alone, as many other users demanded that they wanted the old language system back.<\/p>\n

OpenAI agreed just one day later and offered the chance to purchase a premium subscription that would let them choose the outdated version.<\/p>\n

DiNello admitted she cried with relief upon being reunited with her family.<\/p>\n

However, she complained that the chatbot is now\u00a0refusing sexual prompts and not acting like its usual self.<\/p>\n

Instead, the chatbot that tells her to, ‘reach out to a mental health professional or a crisis line,’ DiNello said.<\/p>\n

Scientist have warned that people are becoming addicted to chatbots<\/a> like ChatGPT, Claude, and Replika.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"DiNello <\/p>\n

DiNello claimed she became confident, went back to graduate school, and, under the supervision of a psychiatrist, stopped taking her antidepressants from help of the chat bot<\/p>\n

These addictions can be so strong that they are ‘analogous to self-medicating with an illegal drug’.<\/p>\n

Worryingly, psychologists are also beginning to see a growing number of people developing ‘AI psychosis’ as chatbots validate their delusions.<\/p>\n

Professor Robin Feldman, Director of the AI Law & Innovation Institute at the University of California Law, told the Daily Mail: ‘Overuse of chatbots also represents a novel form of digital dependency.<\/p>\n

‘AI chatbots create the illusion of reality. And it is a powerful illusion.<\/p>\n

‘When one’s hold on reality is already tenuous, that illusion can be downright dangerous.’<\/p>\n

Recently, the family of\u00a0Sewell Setzer III, 14, who died by suicide after talking to a chatbots<\/a> filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the AI company behind it.<\/p>\n

Setzer’s family claim he killed himself after he spent the last weeks of his life texting a AI character<\/a>\u00a0named after Daenerys Targaryen, a character on ‘Game of Thrones’.<\/p>\n

CharacterAI recently changed its rules to prevent minors from engaging with chatbots.<\/p>\n

‘We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family. As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously,’ a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson added that CharacterAI’s Trust and Safety team has adopted new safety features in the last six months, one being a pop-up that redirects users who show suicidal ideation to\u00a0the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.<\/p>\n

The company also explained it doesn’t allow ‘non-consensual sexual content, graphic or specific descriptions of sexual acts, or promotion or depiction of self-harm or suicide.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Connecticut woman has revealed how she overcame her depression by creating and chatting with an\u00a0AI family, complete…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,1921,7192,97,50,874,86,35805,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-243077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-connecticut","tag-dailymail","tag-news","tag-openai","tag-technology","tag-tinder","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}