Let’s say you’re with someone and you feel a real connection. They look you in the eyes, and in one of those perfect, quiet moments, they share a poem. The words are just right. It feels like they’ve reached right into your soul and pulled out feelings you didn’t even know you had. You’re totally touched and find yourself falling for them even more.

And then, you find out an AI wrote the poem.

Ouch. Suddenly, that perfect moment feels a little weird, doesn’t it? Maybe it even feels like a cheat. You can’t help but ask yourself that painful question: Was it all fake? Were my feelings even real if the words weren’t technically theirs?

But before you decide, hang on a second. Think about this. You’re in a crowded little bar, and a musician gets on stage. They start singing, and their voice is so raw and passionate that it just hits you. For those three minutes, what you feel is 100% real. But the song itself? It was written by someone else, years ago. Does that make the singer a fake? Does it make what you felt any less real?

I think almost everyone would say, “No way!” The feeling was real. It was tied to the performance, the energy, and that shared moment in the room. The singer was just a channel for an emotion, and by sharing it, they made it feel brand new.

So, why does the AI poem feel so different, so off?

Well, here’s my take on it. It’s not really different at all. Whether someone is covering a song, quoting a book, or using AI to find the words for a feeling that’s just too big to pin down, if it makes you feel something, the person isn’t fake, and your feelings aren’t either. But I get why it’s uncomfortable. It pokes at how we’ve all been taught to think about love.

We’ve just gotten so used to treating love like it’s something you can buy or own that we forget it’s not about stuff at all. We live in a world that tells us a thing’s value comes from its brand or its price tag. We want the expensive diamond to prove the commitment is deep. We want the huge gift to prove the affection is real. We’ve been taught, over and over, that you show love by buying things. And when you look at it that way, of course an AI poem feels like a cheap knockoff. It feels wrong because we’re treating the words themselves as the product, not the human intention behind them.

But love isn’t a product. It’s not a thing you get, it’s a thing you do. It’s an action. It’s all about connection.

Think about the person who used AI to find that poem. In that moment, they were doing something loving. They felt something for you and wanted to express it beautifully. Maybe they just didn’t have the words themselves, so they looked for a tool to help them out. The real, genuine act wasn’t the writing of the poem. It was the desire to share it with you. The vulnerable part wasn’t being the author. It was in the performance, the hope that you’d like it, and the risk of putting their heart out there, even with a little help from a machine.

And this is why I honestly believe that for people who care about love, AI isn’t a threat. It’s a test. It’s a great way to make us all stop and think about what really matters in romance and poetry. It forces us to ask ourselves: What do we actually value? The thing itself, the poem as a “product”? Or the action of one person trying to connect with another?

If a poem from a machine can still make your heart skip a beat, that just proves the magic was never in the object itself. The magic is in the sharing. The magic is in the connection. The feeling was never trapped in the words on a screen; it’s what happens between two people.

At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as “fake” love or feelings. There’s just love, and there are things we do that bring us closer or push us apart. Who really cares where the poem came from? The AI didn’t create a fake feeling. It just revealed a simple truth. Our feelings are our own, and they’re sparked by someone’s intention and care for us, no matter what tools they use to show it. In a funny way, that ghost in the machine might be just the thing to remind us what being human and in love is all about.