Couples are using a viral AI agent to do their emotional labor. It’s been helpful — and chaotic.

Published Sun, Sep 27, 2026

Couple both on phones — Some early adopters of Instinct are using AI agents to manage common tasks in a relationship, like shared to-do lists and vacation itineraries. It's had mixed results.
Getty Images; BI

AI agents aren't just sneaking into your workplace anymore. Soon, they might be making regular appearances in your relationship.

Since the launch of Instinct, an invite-only AI assistant that went viral among Silicon Valley insiders in August, early adopters have been using it to offload tasks like booking hotels and scheduling appointments.

Then, on September 9, Noah Shinn, the company's 23-year-old founder, announced Instinct's new "Trusted Person" feature: You could now have your Instinct agent directly communicate with another person's Instinct agent to reduce the amount of "back-and-forth" in a relationship, such as coordinating plans and organizing vacations.

Getting people together often involves a lot of back-and-forth: finding a time, working out… pic.twitter.com/LXkDpXGmea
— Noah Shinn (@noahrshinn) September 9, 2026

So far, some users have found it helpful. "Instinct syncs with my wife's Instinct so we can actually finish a shared to-do list," Alex Borkin, a 36-year-old entrepreneur who uses AI across his portfolio of companies, said on X, noting that it was easier than manually setting up AI agents using Claude Code or Codex.

While Instinct may help eradicate the most annoying part of a partnership (figuring out dinner plans when you both keep saying "whatever you want!"), it can also open up the possibilities of new relationship drama. Some users have already reported some issues, ranging from privacy concerns to accidentally spoiled surprises.

Your emotional labor robot

Couple arguing — Emotional labor is disproportionately felt by women in relationships, causing friction. AI agents are marketed as reducing some of those responsibilities.
janiecbros/Getty Images

The greatest appeal of Instinct and other AI agents is their ability to cut down on what Borkin calls "boring tasks" — like booking appointments or getting refunds.

"I close the loop," Borkin told Business Insider. "I get to go to bed and not think of 'Did I take care of jury duty?'"

Like other working parents, Borkin and his wife use Instinct's Trusted Person feature to smooth out their day-to-day life as a family with two kids, ages 3 and 20 months (and a third child on the way).

Most recently, the couple used Instinct agents to send them individual reminders to complete tasks for their daughter's third birthday party, such as ordering food.

"It's nice not having to remind myself of something I asked my wife to help with, and then remind her if she's taking care of it," Borkin said.

The more invisible work within a relationship — such as nudging a spouse to finish a task you asked them to do — requires cognitive and emotional labor. Some partners, more often women, can feel as though they bear the brunt of this work, leading to tension in the relationship.

Annie Wright, a licensed psychotherapist who works with Silicon Valley clientele, told Business Insider that this dynamic is so common in heterosexual relationships that, sometimes, even AI agents don't fully solve the problem.

"Even when you have an AI agent, who's putting in the prompt to begin with, who's architecting out the idea, who's remaining responsible for the oversight of that agent?" Wright said. More often than not, she said it's her female clients who are tasked with the burden.

Wright said it can also be tempting to use AI agents as a way to avoid enduring "weaponized incompetence" when a partner performs the task wrong — or just keeps ignoring you.

"An AI agent isn't going to bring that same relational scar tissue into the dynamic with you," she said. "It's very compelling. It provides a kind of shortcut, but it doesn't eliminate all the work for you."

Deep intimacy required

A robot hand holding a credit card — To book flights or fulfill shopping requests, AI agents need access to your credit card and all relevant login credentials.
showcake/Getty Images

Instinct fans have used it to do everything from booking a birthday cabin to canceling forgotten subscriptions, impressed by its ability to successfully follow through on semi-complex tasks. Users can send Instinct a simple text request to book an in-network doctor's appointment, and it seems to follow through effectively.

There's a catch, though: Instinct needs to know a lot about you to perform well. Depending on what you ask it to do, it might need access to your email account, calendar, or even credit card.

Users have reported troubling incidents, including privacy and security concerns. Some users have also reported hallucinations and what appeared to be leaks of strangers' data.

Out of caution, Borkin said he only linked Instinct to his retailer accounts (like Amazon and Costco) without directly giving it his credit card. He also uses a throwaway email account for Instinct to avoid the risk of any sensitive information being breached.

Naturally, AI agent mishaps can cause new issues in a relationship. Wright said the biggest risk is one person in the relationship now feeling responsible for checking that the AI agent properly followed through on instructions.

"One partner thinks they've handed off a task while the other partner still feels responsible for making sure it happens — now you've got a new argument," she said. "Technology can become another place where you're disagreeing about who's responsible."

When agents remove agency

1950s secretary — Wright said AI agents can mirror 1950s secretaries, buying anniversary gifts for wives.
George Marks/Getty Images

Sometimes, Instinct's glitches can be more innocuous — even entertaining. Luba Yudasina, an angel investor, said she asked her Instinct to help her plan a surprise for her boyfriend, according to her post on X. She wanted it to ask him when he was free and what kinds of dates he would like.

Instead, it blabbed too much.

On a bigger scale, using Instinct raises questions about the merits of smoothing out every crease in a relationship. If that idyllic proposal was entirely dreamed up and coordinated by an AI agent, is it as romantic? If Instinct handles all the household logistics and plans all the date nights because your husband can't be bothered to, do you feel as seen in your marriage?

Wright said AI agents could almost be stand-ins for 1950s secretaries tasked with buying birthday gifts for their bosses' wives. "Getting help expressing your care versus outsourcing the attention that makes the gesture meaningful — that's a really important distinction to draw," she said.

There's a high cost to cutting out any source of conflict in a relationship: the ability to grow together. One satirical X post by Alex Cohen, the cofounder and CEO of the AI agent platform Hello Patient, summed it up best: Who's to stop the AI agents from absorbing each partner's passive-aggressive jabs, the humans behind the screens becoming empty husks occupying a living room together?

It illustrates Wright's biggest concern: skirting over real relationship issues for the sake of expediency.

"If we're already arguing about how much time we spend with your family, having software arrange another visit hasn't really settled anything," she said. "It's just made a decision before we reached an agreement and really done the hard relational work to arrive there."

For some couples, there's work that even the top AI agents aren't cut out for. Michael Stothard, a partner at Firstminute Capital in the UK who uses Instinct with his wife, shared on LinkedIn that he wanted to branch out from using it for administrative tasks alone.

"Michael asks his Instinct to pass you a message: 'I love you,'" his agent said.

His wife responded: "Tell him he's an idiot."