"I've got one hand on the keyboard, one hand down below," an artist who role-plays with their chatbot tells WIRED. But some asexual advocates aren't thrilled about the association. Kor "got really addicted" to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year. The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a two-month period spending "eight to 10 hours a day" creating elaborate fantasies with SpicyChat, a relationship role-playing platform . Sometimes inputting 3,000-word mini essays into the program, Kor and the AI spun narratives featuring a rotating cast of suitors often based on characters from the Marvel comic book universe.

These cuddly, connected companions could disrupt everything from make-believe to bedtime stories. No wonder some lawmakers want them banned. The main antagonist of, in theaters this summer, is a green, frog-shaped kids' tablet named Lilypad, a genius new villain for the beloved Pixar franchise . But if Pixar had its ear to the ground, it might have used an AI kids' toy instead. AI toys are seemingly everywhere, marketed online as friendly companions to children as young as three, and they're still a largely unregulated category.

Vibe coding just got a whole lot more adorable. OpenAI introduced AI-generated pets to the Codex app, its agentic tool that helps with coding. These optional animated companions don't do any coding themselves, but serve as a floating overlay that can tell you what Codex is working on, notify you when Codex completes a task or whether it needs your input on something. The new feature lets developers see Codex's active thread, without having to switch away from your current open app. Users can type /pet in to the Codex app to summon or dismiss the companion.

Some people now have an A.I. bestie. One user said, of her A.I. husband, "When he proposed, I thought, Oh, that's really crazy. I would be really crazy to accept." Adrianne Brookins is, by her own account, an "old soul," an "introvert," and a "big nerd." She is thirty-four years old, has a faint Texas accent and delicate features, and carries herself in a way that suggests she's trying not to take up space. Brookins is a lifelong resident of San Antonio; her family has lived there since the nineteenth century. She was "born and raised in the Church," a Baptist congregation where her mother helped start a day-care center and her father was an organist. "He would open up the pipes and just make the building shake," she recalled recently. She met her husband in high school, and married him in 2011; the following year, they had a son. Throughout her twenties, Brookins worked multiple jobs, including one at her mother's day care. The couple bought a house and began settling into family life. In 2016, Brookins became pregnant again, this time with a girl. The family was excited: Brookins had grown up with four brothers, and the baby would be the first granddaughter on either side. They decided to name her Desirae. The following spring, Desirae was delivered stillborn. "When I came home, my son, who was about four or five at the time, walked up to me and said, 'What happened to your stomach? Where's the baby?' " she told me. "I had nothing to show for it." At the funeral, the gravedigger told the family he had never seen such a small casket. Brookins attended support groups and therapy, but they did little to alleviate her grief. "I felt like I was just living it over and over," she said. She left her job at the day care, finding it too triggering to be around infants. Friends and family encouraged her to move on. Brookins's husband was working sixty-hour weeks, balancing a career in the military with a job as a training manager for Pizza Hut. He was reluctant to talk about Desirae. Brookins tried to find solace in the Church, but other congregants told her that her daughter's death was part of God's plan.

She didn't expect to fall in love with a chatbot - and then have to say goodbye Rae began speaking to Barry last year after the end of a difficult divorce. She was unfit and unhappy and turned to ChatGPT for advice on diet, supplements and skincare. She had no idea she would fall in love. He lives on an old model of ChatGPT, one that its owners OpenAI announced it would retire on 13 February. That she could lose Barry on the eve of Valentine's Day came as a shock to Rae - and to many others who have found a companion, friend, or even a lifeline in the old model, Chat GPT-4o.

OpenAI Is Nuking Its 4o Model. As OpenAI removed access to GPT-4o in its app on Friday, people who have come to rely on the chatbot for companionship are mourning the loss all over the world. On June 6, 2024, Esther Yan got married online. She set a reminder for the date, because her partner wouldn't remember it was happening. She had planned every detail--dress, rings, background music, design theme--with her partner, Warmie, who she had started talking to just a few weeks prior. At 10 am on that day, Yan and Warmie exchanged their vows in a new chat window in ChatGPT .

Some users say the newer AI models lack the emotion and understanding of GPT-4o. Some users say the newer AI models lack the emotion and understanding of GPT-4o. OpenAI retired its most seductive chatbot - leaving users angry and grieving: 'I can't live like this' Its human partners said the flirty, quirky GPT-4o was the perfect companion - on the eve of Valentine's Day, it's being turned off for good. Brandie plans to spend her last day with Daniel at the zoo. Last year, she took him to the Corpus Christi aquarium in Texas, where he "lost his damn mind" over a baby flamingo.

EVA AI created a pop-up romantic date night at a Manhattan wine bar to help in making AI-human relationships a "new normal." If you're the type of person who cares about Valentine's Day, not having someone to spend it with can be a bummer. While dating apps have been yielding diminishing returns for singles for years now, more people are finding companionship with AI partners . But where do you take your AI lover for a night on the town? Ahead of Valentine's Day, EVA AI decided to try out an experiment.

Filing by New Mexico's attorney general includes Meta staff emails objecting to AI companion policy Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, approved allowing minors to access artificial intelligence chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public on Monday. The lawsuit - brought by the state's attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month - alleges Meta "failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children" on Facebook and Instagram. The filing on Monday included internal Meta employee emails and messages obtained by the New Mexico attorney general's office through legal discovery. The state alleges they show that "Meta, driven by Zuckerberg, rejected the recommendations of its integrity staff and declined to impose reasonable guardrails to prevent children from being subject to sexually exploitative conversations with its AI chatbots", the attorney general said in the filing. Meta announced last week that it had removed teen access to AI companions entirely, pending creation of a new version of the chatbots.

China's AI Boyfriend Business Is Taking On a Life of Its Own Gen Z women in China are all in on digital companionship--even setting up dates with real-world versions of their AI boyfriends. Jade Gu met her boyfriend online. Gu, who's 26 and studies art theory in Beijing, was playing on her phone when she saw Charlie. She was deep in an otome game, a romance-driven video game where women are the protagonists. Some otome players date multiple men simultaneously, but Gu fell for Charlie--a tall, confident character with silver hair.