I think my best friend/roommate has an unhealthy relationship with AI

I don’t know who to talk to about something like this. Unlike my friend- I’ll call her “Claire” for the sake of privacy- I am not super tech literate. I googled where to share experiences and read a few suggestions before finding this forum. Hopefully this is the right place?

Claire has been my best friend since the fourth grade, so of course when we both got into the same college it was a no brainer to become roomies. I’m majoring in history, she’s majoring in computer science. I bring that up to say that I have always been one for physical media: old books, cassettes, VHS tapes, etc. I didn’t upgrade from my flip-out-keyboard phone until the later half of the 2010’s.

Claire however, has always been on the cutting edge of technological advancements. She’s always had the newest gaming consoles, the newest phones, and so many various bluetooth devices I honestly couldn’t tell you what half of them were for. She was an early adopter of streaming, VR, and now, AI.

I wasn’t really concerned at first, I mean I honestly thought it was kind of cool, you remember that one website that would generate the picture grid? I can’t remember the name of it but I remember her showing me “Shrek Trail-cam Footage”, only like two of the six or nine pictures looked half decent, but I understood the appeal and humour behind it.

The next thing I remember was all the crazy photo filters she would show me, her as different animated characters and stuff- again, not my thing, but cool, yenno?

Then she started using it for homework. I think that’s when I first started to get kinda skeeved out about the whole thing. I mean who am I to tell a computer science major how to use technology but… I don’t know, something about it just felt wrong.

I don’t know when she started talking to the AI for sure. I know she had a couple fictional characters she was talking to at some point. It was never anything serious, but It slowly escalated over time to her picking up her phone in-between gaming matches to text back one of the characters from the game she was literally currently playing.

At some point within the last year she stopped talking to the fictional characters and directly to the AI itself. I only know this because she said the fictional character thing was “cringe now” when I asked if she was still texting the guy from her game.

It’s gotten a lot worse these past few months. I hear her talking in her room at all hours of the day and night. I can’t make out what she’s saying but I know it’s her. She must have headphones in because I can’t hear a response- either that or she’s using text-to-speech. Whenever I do manage to see her out of her room, she’s so glued to her phone she barely registers what I’m saying.

I’ve tried texting her instead but all I get are these weird responses that sound nothing like her. I ran a couple through one of those AI-detection things on a hunch and the site- if it’s to be trusted- told me they were all AI generated.

I asked her about her classes and she told me they all moved online. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’m too scared to try and snap her out of it again. The last time I saw her heading back to her room from the bathroom she looked (and smelled) like she hadn’t showered in days, when I tried to say something she ignored me, as per usual, but this time I pushed further. I reached out to shake her shoulder, just to get her attention- but jesus christ. I wish I hadn’t.

Her head whipped up and I swear her eyes were black. Her hair was so greasy it was two shades darker than normal and pin-straight. Her face was riddled with acne, half of the bumps were scabbed over like she was picking at them, something she used to give me crap about in our middle school years.

She had grabbed my wrist to stop me from touching her and seriously… I don’t even know what to say. Maybe this won’t freak anybody else out but if you knew Claire… I mean she used to care so much about her appearance. Now she has these… talons? I don’t know how else to describe them. Her hands were so dirty and bent and weird and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them since.

She scratched me and even though I disinfected it twice, I think my brain is just replaying how dirty she was and it’s messing with me. I’ve never had a minor cut or scrape that was so itchy. I’m thinking it’s a manifestation of my anxiety about the situation.

After she grabbed me she just sort of stared for a bit before letting me go to… scamper? back to her room. That was three nights ago and I haven’t seen her since. It’s starting to smell when I walk past her room. I know she’s still in there because I can hear her talking and when I texted her about it I got this:

“Sorry, Bestie! Just a funny little prank—hope you laughed! Super busy now but I will absolutely talk to you later—I Love You!”

The AI detector website I’ve been using confirmed what I already suspected about that text.

That brings me to why I felt the need to seek out literally any place to… I don’t even know what I’m looking for, maybe just to share what happened. I don’t know.

Last night when I was trying to sleep I could hear scratching on the wall that separates our bedrooms. It went on for hours. Just slow methodical dragging of what I imagine to be her nails against the wall. Sometimes in-between her indecipherable murmurs it would speed up and just the thought of it makes me feel ill. I genuinely have zero fucking idea what to do here. Claire is my only real friend and I haven’t even spoken to the real her in weeks.

I’ll update this if anything else happens but honestly I’m worried what state she will be in the next time I do see her. I think I’ll try leaving some food and water outside her bedroom door tonight. Maybe that will help.