By The Economist 

The idea of humans forming bonds with artificial-intelligence (AI) personas once seemed like science fiction. No longer. Around the world people are finding companionship, of varying degrees, with AIs. Some use them as a virtual buddy, others as a mentor, therapist or lover. Many have signed up for dedicated AI companionship apps, of which hundreds have recently launched. Character.AI, one such app, has 20m monthly active users; Google poached its founders as part of a $2.7bn deal last year. Other people, like Ms Jiao, are finding companionship with chatbots originally designed to be productivity assistants, such as ChatGPT.

As AI companions get better at alleviating loneliness, they may displace normal social relations, whether romantic or friendships. Recent research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and OpenAI, which analysed millions of messages on ChatGPT, found that higher daily usage correlated with increased loneliness. It is unclear, though, whether loneliness leads to heavier usage or heavy usage leads to loneliness. And since ai friends are “always available” and “identify our desires and fulfill them without preferences” of their own, they are training their human users to have unrealistic expectations of real relationships, says Pat Pataranutaporn of MIT. They can also be sycophantic, agreeing with users even if their thoughts are harmful.