What are 'robot rights,' and should AI chatbots have them?

AI chatbots are all the rage. From ChatGPT to Bing's new AI-powered search engine and Google's new Bard chatbot, people are obsessed with seeing how they can replace tasks with AI and test its limits. Much of researchers' and journalists' concerns about the new AI wave have focused on bots' potential to generate bad answers and misinformation -- and its potential to displace human workers. But David Gunkel, a professor of communication studies at Northern Illinois University, is wrestling with a different question: What rights should robots, including AI chatbots, have? The question has taken on new urgency since the New York Times published an interview with Bing's AI, Sydney, in which the AI said it loved the reporter, and the Washington Post interviewed Sydney without mentioning that the reporter was a reporter.