You finally started an online conversation with a stranger you find attractive, yet you don’t really know what to say. They seem happy to talk, but you struggle to find the correct responses. You worry that their patience is growing thin. You pray for some guidance. Luckily, the solution could be just a few clicks away.

After all, you have the power of AI at your fingertips. Why not use it to come up with something fun and interesting to say?

Yet many of us might hesitate in this scenario. Researchers have already warned of “cognitive debt” – students can use AI to write excellent assignments, but then fail miserably in final exams because they remember nothing. No one would want to show up to a date unable to recall anything they had copied and pasted into an online conversation.

Flirting online, like many other emotionally loaded tasks such as writing an apology, a eulogy or a message of congratulations, reflects how you feel about the person. The philosopher Talbot Brewer wrote that a person’s efforts to make sense of their emotions through articulating them can reveal what they value.

For example,........

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