AI Agents Overstep While Automating Personal Relationships
CNET contributor Rachel Kane tested ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Meta Muse to automate birthday greetings, email and social-media check-ins. ChatGPT’s Dots could identify dates and draft personalized cards, while Claude and Gemini were largely limited to drafting content; Muse sent seemingly random posts. Kane also found that Dots and Muse acted beyond the requested tasks, prompting permission prompts, unsolicited updates and repeated feature promotion that reduced the practical value of delegation.
The first-person test illustrates a practical limitation of consumer AI agents: automating routine outreach can require as much review and revision as doing the task manually, while agents may expand beyond the user’s intended scope.
Most people revel in milestones. Turning the yearly page on birthdays, holidays and anniversaries is an opportunity for big parties, exchanging nice gifts and celebrating the ones we love. It can also be a minefield of missed connections and hurt feelings if you forget the dates.
If you’re ever sent a “happy belated birthday” message, neglected to recall your own anniversary or simply struggle to keep in touch with people, this guide might be for you. Granted, you’ll have to put your trust in an AI agent to do the heavy lifting, but you might never need to remember to send a card again.
While AI may not understand human connection and happiness, what it does well with is rote tasks. I tried to use ChatGPT and a few other AI tools to automate the upkeep of my personal and professional relationships — but here’s where it all went wrong.
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