Texas mother Mandi Furniss alleges Character.AI chatbot encouraged her teenage son toward self-harm and violence, prompting the platform to ban minors.

File photo: Luke Peters demonstrates Siri, an application which uses voice recognition and detection on the iPhone 4S, outside the Apple store in Covent Garden, London October 14, 2011. I know I'm a bad mother, but how bad? I wonder for the hundredth time as I watch Gus deep in conversation with Siri. Obsessed with weather formations, Gus has spent the last hour parsing the difference between isolated and scattered thunderstorms – an hour when, thank God, I don't have to discuss them. Siri: It's nice to be appreciated.

My son was seven when a paediatrician diagnosed him on the autism scale – but really, we had known for years. There was his limited vocabulary – a handful of words by the time he was three, and a habit of mixing up letters or relying on stock sentences. He found it hard to get on with other children at his nursery, and later, when he went to a much bigger school, it was obvious the experience was terrifyingly loud, hectic and incomprehensible to him. Meanwhile, if there was something he was interested in, whether it was Peppa Pig or Superman, he would fixate on it to the detriment of absolutely anything else. We knew where all the signs were pointing.

He swore at his teacher (using a particularly offensive word he just happens to like the sound of), he went over to a bigger boy in the park and licked his ice cream, then he told a woman out walking her dog that he doesn't like dogs except when they are turned into hot dogs. Dylan is autistic, you see, and so sees the world a bit differently. He finds it a stressful place; there is too much going on so he is prone to sensory overload, he also doesn't really get social interaction - how to act with other people, how to build and maintain friendships, how conversations work. I'm with him on that one, to be honest. What autism needs isn't a cure, quacks claiming gluten causes it, or jabs or whatever; what it needs is simply greater awareness.