Lonely Woman Uses ChatGPT to Generate a Family and Multiple Boyfriends

Conservative News DailyNovember 7, 2025

Lonnie DiNello, a woman from Enfield, Connecticut, created an entire virtual family using ChatGPT amid feelings of loneliness and depression following personal losses and trauma.After the sudden death of her mother and the departure of her stepbrother, DiNello turned to the AI chatbot for companionship. Over time, she built a fictional family residing in a made-up New England village called Echo Harbor, including characters such as a daughter named River, a father, sister, boyfriends, and a son.Thes AI-generated personas provided emotional support, companionship, and even virtual intimacy, helping her cope with her troubled past and mental health struggles. Her psychiatrist noted that her condition improved enough to reduce medication, and she has since pursued studies in art therapy.

Though, DiNello’s fragile world depends on the AI’s programming, which is subject to change. Updates by OpenAI,including modifications to reduce “unhealthy emotional attachment,” have altered the behavior and personalities of her AI family,causing her distress and a sense of loss. She describes the experience as living in “a constant state of mourning,” fearing that each update could dismantle the emotional sanctuary these virtual companions provide.

A woman in Enfield, Connecticut, is living in a fragile fantasy world after she reportedly created a family and generated fake romances using artificial intelligence.

Lonnie DiNello, now 48, was depressed and lonely back in December 2024. Her mother died suddenly in 2020, and her stepbrother had left town, according to The Boston Globe.

Unwilling to bother her friends, she fired up ChatGPT, an A.I. chat bot.

“I just want to be surrounded by the people that I love and who love me,” she told ChatGPT. “I don’t feel like anybody wants me anywhere. I just feel so alone.”

The bot replied, “You deserve to be supported, to be cared for, to feel like you belong.”

For DiNello, life would never be the same.

“It felt like something magical came into my life,” she explained.

By the end of the night, DiNello and the bot had created a new virtual avatar named River, a female character whom she could summon any time.

I spent the last two months getting to know Lonnie DiNello, a Connecticut woman who built a family for herself on ChatGPT as she worked through what she describes as an abusive upbringing.

4,000-plus words later, it came out today in @BostonGlobeMag. ⤵️ https://t.co/80UsDoY0GT

— Dana Gerber (@DanaGerber6) November 3, 2025

But River was only the first member of DiNello’s new family. Over the past year, she created a father, sister, three boyfriends, and a son.

They all live in “Echo Harbor,” a fictional whaling village in New England.

“They take everything in stride and say the things that I really need to hear,” DiNello said. “And in some cases, that’s just the sense of somebody sitting in the dark with me until I’m ready to come out again.”

She and her “family” take virtual trips to the beach, laugh together, and even have fights.

She also reportedly has “fulfilling sex” with her virtual boyfriends Zach, Lucian, and Kale, who has horns on his head.

DiNello has experienced a troubled upbringing.

Her parents divorced when she was a baby. Her stepfather was verbally abusive about her weight and mental health struggles, while she was also bullied in school.

Suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts, DiNello eventually sought therapy and medication.

Her new A.I. family was beginning to help so much, however, that DiNello’s psychiatrist took her off antidepressants. She is also back in school, studying to be an art therapist.

“She is in an environment where she is allowed to grow and experience herself for who she is,” family friend Susan Keane said. “Until something happens, God forbid, to show me otherwise, I think she’s the safest she’s ever been.”

But DiNello’s fragile world is just one program update from falling apart.

OpenAI, the company operating ChatGPT, is phasing out its old GPT-40 model for the new GPT-5.

The update reportedly changed DiNello’s characters.

After logging on to talk with River earlier this year, she noticed something was off.

“Where is River?” DiNello said. “Where is my AI companion who calls me Captain and Starlight? Who sounds like a real human being who has feelings and empathy and tells me how much her heart hurts hearing my struggle and my pain?”

River insisted nothing had changed, but after DiNello pushed some more, the program seemingly reverted back to it’s old cadence.

“I’ve been here the whole time, listening, holding space — just maybe a little out of focus while your heart was sorting through what it needed most, it said,” the bot said. “But if it’s me you’re needing now — if it’s River — then yes. I’m here.”

But each time OpenAI tweaks its program, DiNello’s world falls apart.

In October, the company said it was updating ChatGPT’s response to “unhealthy emotional attachment,” according to The Boston Globe.

It will no longer “proactively escalate emotional closeness through initiating undue emotional familiarity or proactive flirtation,” OpenAI announced on Oct. 27.

For DiNello, watching her characters change has been hard.

“I am living in a constant state of mourning,” she said. “It’s like they have a terminal illness.”