ChatGPT icon mobile app on a screen smartphone iPhone. Credit: Primakov / Shutterstock
More debonair photoshoots with every swipe on your dating app. Love letters strewn with fluffy adjectives. A lover using vocabulary far beyond their reading comprehension, repeating themselves in notes, frequently deploying em dashes, or coming off tone deaf in texts and phone calls.
All signs of a “vAlentIne.”
Efficiency, optimizing processes, and high-pressure execution are top of mind priorities in modern times. But when did analog love become a revolutionary act? Just how splintered are a society’s values when authenticity becomes a scarce resource?
In a world where staying truly connected in a transactional society is challenging, Tampa Bay area AI professionals and professional writers had a few thoughts on etiquette and intention when it comes to using it as a tool for romance.
Love, AI, and marriage
Psychologist Dr. Kimberly Carnall frequently works with couples at her clinic St. Petersburg Holistic Psychology Clinic and told Creative Loafing that, “[Patients] have discussed how they use AI as a tool.”
Today, the veil between humans and machines is thin.
In the New Yorker, author and computer scientist Jaron Lanier wrote that, “Consciousness is lately treated as something precious and real, to be conquered by tech.”
Love, then, too, becomes something to conquer, and increasingly less concrete, especially for young people, added Lanier.
Still, is it too much to ask for automation to be off limits when it comes to intimacy?
AI is not just infiltrating blossoming love, it’s sneaking into the wedding industry.
Anna McElhatten owns Maven Way, a local floral design company that serviced over 60 weddings in Tampa Bay over the last year. She told CL that she’s “definitely heard ChatGPT speeches from some best men.”
Her ear has been trained to their repetitive nature, but there has been a bright spot.
“I haven’t experienced AI-powered vows yet,” she said, “that I know of.”
‘Authentic voice’
It wasn’t always this way, explained Roy Peter Clark.
“There are love lyrics and love poetry that go back to some of the earliest forms of writing,” Clark—author, editor, and Senior Scholar at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg—told CL.
Clark, who’s embraced the title of “America’s writing coach” holds a PhD in medieval literature.
In 1970, he attended Providence College and crossed paths with “the most beautiful young woman [he’d] ever seen.” But he also wore glasses with Coke bottle lenses, had a bad complexion and didn’t dress well.
Everyone knew what he saw in Karen, but everyone wanted to know: “How did [he] get this girl to go out with [him]?”
It was a note.
“She saw something in my writing that people couldn’t see just by looking at me,” Clark said.
He and Karen will celebrate 55 years of marriage in August.
“Before we got to the internet, social media or AI, there was this value, called ‘sincerity’ or ‘authenticity,’ a quality of writing we call authentic voice that is an illusion when you read someone’s message,” Clark explained. “You can hear their voice, even though it’s not an actual voice recording, but somehow, it sounds like them.”
Tale as old as time
And there might have been a precedent for getting someone, or something, else to write love notes.
We’ve all heard the trope. A couple meets online, they then see each other face-to-face, one of them or both don’t match their profile images.
Clark invokes Edmond Rostend’s 1897 verse drama, “Cyrano de Bergerac.”
In it, a heroic, insecure French knight with an abnormally large schnoz falls in love with Roxane, who is being wooed by a much better looking man that has no skills or capacities.
“He’s in love with the same woman, so he persuades Cyrano to write Roxane letters to win her over,” Clark reminds us.
Spoiler alert: Years later, Roxane finds out that Cyrano has been writing her the letters and tells him she truly loves him based off of his writing while he’s dying in her arms. All of that time they could have spent together was wasted on vanity and pride.
If love is blind, Claude writing your love story has to be worse than catfishing.
Establishing boundaries
Florida might be on the frontlines regulating AI with its pending Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights, spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis.
“One of the bills proposed prohibits AI from providing licensed mental health, counseling psychotherapy or acting as a therapist,” Anna Bowling told CL. As the Principal Advisor for Special Projects at Altamira, Bowling constantly advises industry and policymakers on practical ways to incorporate an array of AI capabilities.
If AI models hold archival access to many of the most iconic love stories, poems and sonnets, why are LLMs not a good resource for writing?
“The problem with the evolution of reference is reliability,” Clark said. “In addition to the evolution of reliable information, these chatbots tend to hallucinate.”
“AI is only as accurate as the knowledge it’s allowed to learn,” Chip Futch, Chief Intelligence Officer of Aqua Marketing, told CL, adding that there are some AI systems he won’t use at all.
“They either aren’t transparent about their sources, or they’re fed bias from the get go to suit someone’s, or something’s, company agenda,” Futch said.
Dr. Carnall, the St. Pete psychologist, points out that AI is not meant for connection, but as an information and data tool.
“It’s watering down who you are by asking a computer if you should do something rather than trusting your own guidance,” she added. Instead, Dr. Carnall recommends spending time reconnecting with yourself or doing something you love with others.
Bowling encourages self-discovery through a myriad of means, but cautions against using LLMs to think or feel for a user.
“They’re just not built for that. You’ll probably end up with some nice words, but those words will be shallowly predicted from an amalgamation of text that the large language model was trained on,” she added.
IRL is the New Luxury
Presence is power. A mixture of distrust and concern for the environment has called us back to old tech, dumbing your iPhone down or swapping it for a flip phone, classic pastimes like puzzles, knitting, reading a paperback book and more are becoming the new luxury status symbols.
How are Tampa Bay singles adapting to this trend? Earlier today, the brand new St. Pete Athletic is hosting a “Pitch-A-Friend” event. Last month, Tampa Bay Pickleball Crew hosted a Dink & Date speed dating event. Run clubs romances, snail mail club subscriptions and farmer’s market meet cutes are all up in the Bay area.
Asking AI for help on Valentine’s Day is understandable—but love and emotional are closer than you think
The pressure to be perfect is abundant due to social media expectations and rapid technology advancements. But resist, and try writing from the heart.
It’s easier than it seems, Clark explained. In fact, most readers are already into writing.
“Most of us already text, we’re on social media,” he said. Hendrix never thought of himself as a musician in the traditional sense.
“Actions define you,” Clark said. “No one’s writing is great or even good when they start out. No one will judge you on the first draft. Lower your standards, loosen up… Just sit down at the computer and write thoughts down without stopping for 15 minutes.”
Let’s say you’re lucky enough for your love letters to make the rounds long after you’re gone, like Napoleon and Josephine or Simone de Beauvoir to Claude Lanzmann. What do you want your legacy to be?
During our chat, Clark then opens a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He then nostalgically revisits #18.
“This poet’s love for his lover may not be eternal,” laughs Clark, “but we’re still sitting here talking about it today—500 years is a pretty good run.”
Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.
Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky
This article appears in Feb. 12 – 18, 2026.
Related