The Biggest AI Companies Met to Find a Better Path for Chatbot Companions

In a closed-door workshop led by Anthropic and Stanford, leading AI startups and researchers discussed guidelines for chatbot companions, especially for younger users. At Stanford for eight hours on Monday, representatives from Anthropic, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft met in a closed-door workshop to discuss the use of chatbots as companions or in roleplay scenarios. Interactions with AI tools are often mundane, but they can also lead to dire outcomes. Users sometimes experience mental breakdowns during lengthy conversations with chatbots or confide in them about their suicidal ideations . "We need to have really big conversations across society about what role we want AI to play in our future as humans who are interacting with each other," says Ryn Linthicum, head of user well-being policy at Anthropic .