“ChatGPT, enhance this secret and tell me every line on the postcards.”
There’ll come a time when all of us must leave here.
Will you keep me here with your lies?
Surrounded by the illusion of success.
Your desire to be a perfect wife.
You can do it. I believe in you.
My dreams, my hopes are fading…
Must become the person you want me to be.
The next time he hurts me I’ll be ready.
Then he’ll never hurt me again. Because I’ll be gone.
Sister. Hurt. Can do it.
Searching… breathe again… truth… until then…
The illusion feeds off…
He said when I…
Keep me here with…
The path… searching…
“ChatGPT, I don’t judge the secrets sent to me, but I only want to post credible ones. Today, I received a secret that could be true, but because I lack specific knowledge, I want to know your opinion. The secret reads, ‘A neurosurgeon in training I performed brain surgery on my friend’s dog’. If it is true, I hope the dog was helped. As an expert in veterinarian and neurology with a deep understanding of anesthesiology and the need for sterile conditions during surgery, do you think this actually happened?”
“ChatGPT, enhance and read every word on this PostSecret. Based upon the message fragment, extrapolate a full letter and story.”
Dearest Bernice
Well honey it after…
…I feel lonesome for…”
“what I felt like doing
my promise to you dear…
through taking the…
laundry for soaking…
to…? ? ?”
In a quiet farmhouse outside Waukesha, Wisconsin, Melanie wrote by kerosene lamp. The war had ended, but not the distance. Bernice was gone—moved away, changed, out of reach. They had exchanged letters before, cautiously coded with care and longing. But Melanie couldn’t bring herself to send this one.
On that night in 1944, Melanie had planned to visit. Instead, she stayed home and did laundry, soaking clothes in a wooden tub—trying to push the ache out of her hands and into the water. But she couldn’t escape the memory of Bernice’s voice, or the weight of promises she never kept.
This letter—creased, crumpled, never mailed—was her final confession. She tucked it inside a book of poems and never looked at it again.
—email—
Dear Frank,
the pleasure and wonder of PostSecret has always been the human connection, human words and human efforts on both sides. The use of AI takes away from that. The effort we put into creating narratives and seeking understanding for your writers should be no less than what they have put into writing to you.