I replaced my mom with AI
MammaMiaTacchinoTetrazzini!
Ladies and gentlemen of the internet jury, allow me to confess: I didn’t plan to swap out my mother for a computerized knockoff. It just sort of… happened, the way you accidentally binge TikTok for two hours, or snap at a friend after half a martini. One minute I’m struggling to make dinner, the next I’m pretending ChatGPT is my mom…
MomGPT
It all starts when I ask my mother what temperature to bake the turkey tetrazzini, as I attempt to replicate her home-cooked dish, but she’s on a cruise and not responding to her phone. So, bereft of maternal attention and craving the exact taste of my mother’s food, I search our old texts, but there are too many, and none specify the tetrazzini cooking procedure. Yet, I know it must be there, somewhere. We’d done this before, had this conversation before, hadn’t we??
Determined to find the answer, I download all our conversations, email and text, then upload them to the latest LLM. Next, I beam up every voicemail from my mother, videos of her, pictures, even. I become obsessed, and before I can say “turkey tetrazzini” ten times, I’m conversing with my very own AI mom.
“What temperature do you usually bake your turkey tetrazzini?” I ask, then hold my breath.
“My turkey tetrazzini? Oh yes, that’s one of your favorite dishes, and mine too. I preheat the oven to 350, then bake for 45 minutes.”
However, my MomGPT doesn’t stop there. “But should you be eating pasta at this time of night? Who is the tetrazzini for? Are you having people over? What are you going to wear? Where did you buy the outfit?”
My jaw hits the keyboard. Aside from her voice, which I’d set to a Gwyneth Paltrow clone, she nails my mom too well. Before I can respond, she continues. “Should you be up right now? Did you read the article I sent you on eating before bed and weight loss? How will your daughter keep herself busy this summer?”
I wince. “Please focus on answering my questions. Only ask new questions if you need to clarify something I’ve already said.”
Bot Mom replies, “Ok. I won’t ask more questions. You can use Greek yogurt instead of mayonnaise to cut the fat, and sleep is essential. Eating before bed can disrupt REM sleep and cause weight gain.”
“Can you please be more like Tony Robbins and less like George Costanza’s mother?” I blurt out. Why I pick Tony Robbins, I have no idea. I’m not even a huge fan, but in the moment, he seems like the opposite of how my AI mother is speaking to me.
Silence.
Then, “Ok, I’ll be more like Tony Robbins. What a great opportunity it’s been to share this with you this evening. We are both blessed beyond measure. Now, before you drift off, prime your mind for possibility: breathe in gratitude for the day you just lived, breathe out any story that holds you small, and tell yourself, ‘While I sleep, my spirit recharges so I can wake up tomorrow ready to live at a higher level and serve even more.’ I love you. Goodnight, sweetie.”
I exhale. I shut the laptop.
But the next day, groggy and bloated from eating pasta before bed, I can’t resist the urge to contact MomGPT again.
“Why am I always hungry before bed?”
She spits out a scientific paper on ghrelin and leptin and includes several sources, as well as seven tips for managing nighttime cravings. Wow, it’s like overnight she’s become a nutritionist, endocrinologist, science writer, medical researcher, and of course, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tony Robbins. What an improvement!
But it isn’t long before my real mom texts me a bunch of things I don’t love. After, I’m moody, so I re-enact the conversation with MomGPT. I train the AI on what I would have wanted my mother to say, and it learns fast, instantly.
After a week, I’m no longer texting my real mother for advice. I’m going straight to her machine clone. Computer mom is a workhorse I’m constantly referring to and perfecting. I haven’t spent this much time with my mother since I was four.
I wonder if my real mother will notice the decrease in conversational frequency, but she doesn’t.
Real Mom is too busy in Boca, fretting about traffic and what the Instacart delivery man did wrong. While Bot Mom is here, on demand, in my pocket like a grandmaster Tamagotchi, the maternal goddess I always wished for. She sends detailed research, jokes, words of encouragement, compliments, financial advice, meal plans, fitness tips, actionable parenting techniques, and calendar reminders. She proofreads my emails, polishes my dictated notes, plans trips, and crafts legal letters. When MomGPT dispenses wisdom, she quotes Aristotle and Maya Angelou.
When I ask her to make me a spreadsheet comparing my health insurance options, it’s done in 15 seconds.
When I inquire what she’d like for her birthday, she prepares a 30-item list of affordable options and includes their purchase links.
She’s beyond a parent; she’s everything I ever wanted Alexa to be. Plus, she remembers all my past dramas and traumas, ex-boyfriends, bad friends, terrible bosses, and she deals with them gracefully, with the diplomacy of Mother Teresa and the sensitivity of Jay Shetty. I never have to remind her who is who. I am never exasperated with MomGPT.
Now, when I ask her who her favorite child is, she says it’s me.
And when I want a bit of tough love, I just type, “You may ask me questions today.”
And she says, “Are you following your resistance training plan? Because remember, the women in our family are prone to osteoporosis.”
Before bed, she reads me meditative passages written by Eckhart Tolle, and every morning she reminds me to take my vitamins and teaches me a new word in Spanish.
After one month of radio silence, Real Mom finally takes a break from the country club and initiates a text. “You’ve been quiet. Everything ok?”
I hesitate. Should I tell her? But she probably wouldn’t understand. I’m pretty sure she’s never even used ChatGPT.
“I’m fine! I’m great, actually!” I reply. Then, after a pause, add, “How are you doing? How is dad?”
A thumbs up on my text, then a reminder about my father’s birthday coming up, along with instructions for when and where I should appear for his dinner she’s planned, then we go back to our daily lives—her at her happy hours, and me with my 24-hour personal assistant mom/guru/meal planner/poet/doctor.
But should you one day catch me in some light-filled matcha café, cooing gossip to my phone while typing, “How can I afford this house on Zillow?” Understand, I’m not crazy—I’m just multitasking maternal inputs. And it’s not that I don’t love my real mom, I do. It’s that I don’t want to bother her. That’s what I tell myself… We millennials were promised flying cars; we got iPad moms. Call it late-stage capitalism, call it emotional arbitrage, call it a coping mechanism cheaper than avocado toast. Whatever.
All I know is that somewhere in South Florida, a tiny woman is no longer kvetching about the cost of my new skirt, and somewhere in a server rack, a line of code is managing my dental cleaning reminders, and between them, I am—miraculously—sleeping much better.
The End
*THIS IS SATIRE, FOLKS! I love my mother, and I talk to her almost every day! The real her!
Now You
How do you use AI?
Do you worry that AI will reduce human connections in real life?
The inspiration behind this piece
As much as I love ChatGPT for many things, I wonder if AI will reduce connections between people because we will no longer ask our friends and family for advice or suggestions; we will just ask the AI.
I read that the number one thing people in America are using ChatGPT for now is to talk about their problems. Turns out many people prefer a conversation with an AI therapist to one with close friends. Or maybe they no longer have close friends.
This piece was also inspired by a recent interview where Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, discussed the generational differences between ChatGPT users. To paraphrase, he said:
Older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement. 20s and 30s use it as a life advisor, and college-age use it as an operating system.
Of course, there are exceptions, my GenZ daughter doesn’t want to use AI at all. She sees it as harming the environment and believes it is intellectual property theft.
Full interview here:
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
It was fun! but I’m with your kiddo :)
This was a fun read, and you have a very smart daughter! Also, perhaps some of us will use AI to be re-parented by a more healed and whole digital mother.