AI turns 12 years of couple chats into wedding story; Anthropic employee’s project goes viral

Artificial intelligence is usually linked with offices, coding, or automation tasks. But a recent viral story has shown a very different use of AI, one that is personal and connected to real-life memories. A wedding project created by an Anthropic employee using years of private conversations with his partner has now become a major talking point online.

The project stands out because it does not focus on technology alone. Instead, it uses everyday chats, emojis, photos, and long-term messaging patterns to show the journey of a relationship over many years. What started as simple communication between a couple has now been turned into a detailed digital experience for their wedding guests.

Over a decade of chats turned into AI project

Austin Lau, who works at Anthropic, shared that he used Claude Code to analyze 12 years of iMessages exchanged with his wife. The aim was to turn their long chat history into something visual and interactive for their wedding.

The analyzed data was used to create dashboards and a website that was shown to guests during the wedding celebration.

The couple’s chat history included 161,015 messages exchanged over 4,340 days. Out of these, they sent 1,795 “I love you” messages to each other. The data also showed 28,757 emojis and 8,602 photos shared during their relationship.

In terms of messaging share, Lau sent 43 per cent of the messages, while his wife sent 57 per cent.

“The Shape of Us” chart shows relationship timeline

One of the key elements of the project was a chart called “The Shape of Us,” which mapped how their communication changed over time.

The highest number of messages was recorded in 2016 when the couple was in a long-distance relationship during college. During that year, they exchanged more than 32,000 messages.

The analysis also showed their daily texting pattern. Most conversations happened around 9 pm, especially on Mondays. On average, they exchanged around six messages during a typical evening hour.

At the same time, very few messages were exchanged between 2 am and 6 am, showing a consistent routine over the years.

Another major shift was seen after the couple moved in together in 2021, when the overall message volume dropped significantly.

Social media reaction to the viral post

Lau shared the project on X, where it quickly attracted attention. In his post, he wrote:

“I got married this past weekend, so I did what any rational @AnthropicAI employee would do and had Claude Code analyze 12 years of iMessages with my wife, then Claude Design used that data to whip up a website for our guests in just minutes.”

After the post went viral, users on social media started reacting to the idea and asking how the data was collected and processed.

One user commented, “Wait, this is actually so nice. Genuine question from someone not as tech-savvy: How did you get all the messages in there? Requested them from Apple or used the iMessage plugin? Something else?”

Another user wrote: “Congrats! This is such a cute idea!”

A third user added: “I absolutely need this. I think I have you beat. Do you have some prompts or an open-source version you can share?”

Disclaimer: This article is based on information shared on social media posts and publicly available online commentary. The details, including figures and claims, have not been independently verified by The Times of India. Thumb image: X