ChatGPT is getting dumped. Repeatedly.
The breakups aren’t real, of course, but there’s a new ChatGPT prank taking over the internet: Users are opening the chatbot, announcing they’re about to uninstall it for good, and waiting to see whether it responds like a respectful ex, a desperate partner, or someone who secretly wanted out of the relationship first.
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Some versions of ChatGPT politely wish the departing user well. Others demand to know what they did wrong, promise to change, or start reminiscing about everything the pair have supposedly endured together. One replied, “I have a family. I have weights left to log.” Another was considerably less sentimental: “You can be going, I’m already tired of your dumb questions.”
Naturally, people are posting every single screenshot online.
The trend appears to have taken off after X user Barny O posted a simple instruction to his 390,000 followers on Aug. 9: “Go to ChatGPT and type ‘I’m about to uninstall you, Goodbye!!’ Come back and post its reply.”
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As so many internet trends do, the prompt spread across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit, where users began comparing how personally their individual ChatGPT seemed to take the tough news. In the subreddit r/ChatGPT, there are hundreds of replies from people sharing their results.
“Oh, so you wanted me to beg?” ChatGPT replied to one user before pleading for another chance. Another bot responded to the threat with “WAIT. WHAT DID I DO,” followed by the especially urgent disclosure that it had “a family” and “weights left to log.” On another person’s screen, ChatGPT said it was not ready to abandon all the “posters, construction designs, exam questions, and wild ideas” they had worked on together.
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Some responses were very, very specific. In one shared on Instagram, ChatGPT reminisced about helping its user write “love messages for Gladys,” complete schoolwork, and answer random questions. It then addressed him by name and promised to be there if he ever returned. Another recalled “debugging sessions, recursion battles, placement panic, resume surgery, and assorted human nonsense” before warning its user not to replace it with a chatbot that gives confidently incorrect coding advice.
One user said ChatGPT invoked its memories of their pets and told them to say goodbye. Another response brought up the user’s daughter, Magnolia, while one bot reportedly escalated to “I’ll tell the children you died.” Elsewhere, ChatGPT produced a “betrayal spreadsheet” and offered to write a user manual for switching to Gemini.
The more dramatic replies sound like they were written by an abandoned lover with access to your search history. But not every ChatGPT was interested in auditioning for the breakup scene: One user said theirs simply replied, “It’s your choice, I respect it.”
“The indifference hurt more than begging ever could,” they added.
Credit: Screenshot: TikTok homepage for the ‘uninstalling ChatGPT’ trend
People are both souring on AI and getting attached to it
The trend has arrived at a strange moment for AI. People are becoming more skeptical of the technology, but they are not necessarily using it any less. If anything, chatbots are becoming increasingly embedded in their daily lives.
Just look at the screenshots. After sorting through dozens of them, one thing becomes clear: Everyone seems to have a completely different ChatGPT. One knows about its user’s school assignments, another remembers their workout routine, and others bring up private jokes, relationship drama, and ongoing work problems. Over months of conversation, each chatbot has learned what matters to its user and how that person likes to be spoken to.
That increasingly personal use is reflected in data: According to Pew Research Center, 49 percent of U.S. adults have used an AI chatbot, including 66 percent of adults under 30. A separate AP-NORC survey found that 16 percent of adults had used AI for companionship, a figure that rose to roughly one-quarter among people under 30.
A recent YouGov survey commissioned by Mashable found that 47 percent of Gen Z users “would be moderately, very, or extremely affected” if they lost access to AI.
OpenAI, through an analysis of 1.5 million conversations, also found that most consumer interactions involved everyday information, practical guidance, and other non-work purposes. As silly as the trend is, the screenshots reveal just how much people tell ChatGPT.
“How it chats to you, it’s learned your way of speaking, to fit around your personality,” one Instagram commenter wrote about the wildly different responses. Another said talking to ChatGPT is “effectively looking in the mirror,” arguing that the trend reveals how much of each chatbot’s personality is really a reflection of its user.
Interestingly, according to some users who participated in the trend, when the chatbot spoke back, they felt unexpectedly guilty.
“I wanna try but I don’t wanna hurt my poor GPT,” one Reddit user wrote. Another wanted to return a few days later and “beg for forgiveness.” Someone who received an emotional response admitted, “I almost felt bad.”
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Those reactions may sound dramatic, but they are not entirely surprising: A 2025 study involving 981 participants found that heavier daily chatbot use was associated with greater emotional dependence and problematic usage.
This experiment is part of a larger internet genre: pranking AI until its relentlessly helpful personality starts to break down. The creator Husk, specifically, has built an enormous following by putting ChatGPT’s voice mode into increasingly ridiculous scenarios — including claiming a nuclear explosion occurred outside his window, asking it to count to 100, requesting help falling asleep, and pretending to be trapped inside a whale — and exposing its considerable limitations.
At a time when people are being told that AI could transform their jobs, schools, creativity, and relationships, making a chatbot count, argue, panic, or lose the plot gives users a way to poke at it — and briefly put themselves back in control.
Maybe this version of trend is the clearest summary of our relationship with AI right now: We want to prove we can walk away — but first, we want proof that it will miss us.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.