Geoffrey Hinton, the man widely regarded as the “godfather of AI” for his groundbreaking work behind many of today’s AI systems, has said on more than one occasion how the technology could potentially wipe out humanity if its development isn’t handled with care.

But while pondering such a profound possibility, OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot recently surprised Hinton in a most unexpected way: His girlfriend used it to end their relationship.

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“She got ChatGPT to tell me what a rat I was,” he told the Financial Times in a recent interview, admitting that he was surprised by her move to call on the AI tool regarding such a delicate matter.

“She got the chatbot to explain how awful my behavior was and gave it to me,” the AI pioneer said, adding, “I didn’t think I had been a rat, so it didn’t make me feel too bad.”

In fact, getting AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT to compose breakup texts, or even ask for advice on how to end a relationship, appears to be nothing new, with an increasing number of people consulting AI on a whole raft of life issues.

Hinton, who last year received the Nobel Prize in Physics for work in the 1980s that led to machine learning with artificial neural networks, quit Google in 2023 after working there for a decade on various AI projects.