Those who were moved by love letters from their boyfriends or girlfriends on Wednesday might not have received the letters from their lovers, as many beautiful lines are now being coined by computer software.

Many people criticized the software as a worrisome sign of a lack of honesty in relationships, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily said.

A young lady surnamed Wu felt suspicious when she received a three-page love letter from her boyfriend who was on a business trip outside Shenzhen on Tuesday, a day before Valentine's Day. The boyfriend later acknowledged in a phone call that he "wrote" the letter using love-letter software downloaded free from the Net.

Such software is abundant on the Net, the Daily report said, offering paragraphs in various styles as proof.

"My sadness is sour, my heart is empty. When I am distracted from a busy life, I suddenly realize that I am missing you so much," one paragraph reads.

Some software borrowed from movie lines, some tried to be humorous, and some even offered love letters in an ancient formal Chinese style.

An IT engineer said the software is not complicated to develop, although collecting material for the database needs time and effort. "I developed one kind of software, and found all the raw materials from online forums, shared by other netizens," said the engineer surnamed Zhu.

"The software only collects and puts the materials together, not much a creative job."

Although the machine-created love letters can be long, they are often not logical in sequence and may read like empty lies, since no software will recall a moving moment between two people.

"While love letters can be written by software, should I find a robot lover?" one netizen asked.

(Shenzhen Daily February 16, 2007)