A new report highlights the dangers of AI companion chatbots which offer friendship and sexual content and imply genuine relationships can be formed with AI companionship sites.
This craze for AI companionship is different from traditional chatbots, offering backstories, photos and personality quirks, acting as friends, romantic partners or confidants.
Character.AI is facing a lawsuit for its involvement in a teen suicide in October, which will test the question of liability for companies for the harmful outputs of AI characters they have created.
There are also fears over user dependency, with some sites stating that young users spend one to two hours a day chatting with these chatbots.
OpenAI released GPT-4.5 on Thursday, a new model which the company claims is its largest yet.