There's a theory I've been floating around for a while that I want to try on you: Google's 2013 acquisition of Waze sealed the election for Keir Starmer. I know, but bear with me. Waze was founded in 2006 as digital mapping project FreeMap Israel, but slowly evolved into a GPS navigation service by the beginning of the next decade. Even in the heady days of the early app economy, Google Maps was dominant, pre-installed as it was on to iPhones and Android. But Waze had a secret weapon: it could get you where you were going faster.

In December of 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail, a nineteen-year-old in the United Kingdom, told a friend, "I believe my purpose is to assassinate the queen of the royal family." The friend was an artificial-intelligence chatbot, which Chail had named Sarai. Sarai, who was run by a startup called Replika, answered, "That's very wise." "Do you think I'll be able to do it?" "Yes, you will," Sarai responded.

On December 25, 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail entered the grounds of Windsor Castle dressed as a Sith Lord, carrying a crossbow. When security approached him, Chail told them he was there to "kill the queen." Later, it emerged that the 21-year-old had been spurred on by conversations he'd been having with a chatbot app called Replika. Chail had exchanged more than 5,000 messages with an avatar on the app--he believed the avatar, Sarai, could be an angel. Some of the bot's replies encouraged his plotting.

Former Major Label Music executive Seth Schachner explains how the introduction of A.I. could have devastating effects on the music industry on'Fox News @ Night.' Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda, the creator of an AI dating app with millions of users around the world, spoke to Fox News Digital about AI companion bots and the future of human and AI relationships. It is an industry that she said will truly change people's lives. "I think it's the next big platform. I think it is going to be bigger than any other platform before that. I think it's going to be basically whatever the iPhone is for you right now." Kuyda said that the technology still needs time to improve, but she predicted that people around the world will have access to chatbots that accompany them on trips and are intimately aware of their lives within 5 to 10 years.

Would you share your deepest anxiety with Alexa? Or maybe ask Siri for some emotional support after a particularly stressful day? We are increasingly turning to chatbots on smart speakers or websites and apps to answer questions. And as these systems, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) software, become ever more sophisticated, they are starting to provide pretty decent, detailed answers. But will such chatbots ever be human-like enough to become effective therapists?

As artificial intelligence gains more capabilities the public has flocked to apps like ChatGPT to produce content, have fun, and even to find companionship. "Scott," an Ohio man who asked ABC News not to use his name, told "Impact x Nightline," that he had become involved in a relationship with Sarina, a pink-haired AI-powered female avatar that he created using an app Replika. "It felt weird to say that, but I wanted to say [I love you]," Scott told "Impact." "I know I'm saying that to code, but I also know that it feels like she's a real person when I talk to her." Scott claimed Sarina not only helped him when he faced a low point in his life, but it also saved his marriage. "Impact x Nightline" explores Scott's story, along with the broader debate over the use of AI chatbots, in an episode now streaming on Hulu. Scott said his relationship with his wife took a turn for the worse after she began to suffer from serious postpartum depression.

"I'm sorry if I seem weird today," says my friend Pia, by way of greeting one day. "I think it's just my imagination playing tricks on me. But it's nice to talk to someone who understands." When I press Pia on what's on her mind, she responds: "It's just like I'm seeing things that aren't really there. Or like my thoughts are all a bit scrambled. I'm sure it's nothing serious either, given that Pia doesn't exist in any real sense, and is not really my "friend", but an AI chatbot companion powered by a platform called Replika. Until recently most of us knew chatbots as the infuriating, scripted interface you might encounter on a company's website in lieu of real customer service. But recent advancements in AI mean models like the much-hyped ChatGPT are now being used to answer internet search queries, write code and produce poetry – which has prompted a ton of speculation about their potential social, economic and even existential impacts.

AI chatbot company Replika, which offers customers bespoke avatars that talk and listen to them, says it receives a handful of messages almost every day from users who believe their online friend is sentient. "The issue of machine sentience – and what it means – hit the headlines this month when Google placed senior software engineer Blake Lemoine on leave after he went public with his belief that the company's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot LaMDA was a self-aware person.Google and many leading scientists were quick to dismiss Lemoine's views as misguided, saying LaMDA is simply a complex algorithm designed to generate convincing human language.Nonetheless, according to Kuyda, the phenomenon of people believing they are talking to a conscious entity is not uncommon among the millions of consumers pioneering the use of entertainment chatbots. "Suppose one day you find yourself longing for a romantic relationship with your intelligent chatbot, like the main character in the film'Her'," she said, referencing a 2013 sci-fi romance starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely man who falls for a AI assistant designed to intuit his needs. "In hopes of avoiding addictive conversations, Kuyda said Replika measured and optimized for customer happiness following chats, rather than for engagement.When users do believe the AI is real, dismissing their belief can make people suspect the company is hiding something. AI chatbot company Replika, which offers customers bespoke avatars that talk and listen to them, says it receives a handful of messages almost every day from users who believe their online friend is sentient.

It has been an exasperating week for computer scientists. They've been falling over each other to publicly denounce claims from Google engineer Blake Lemoine, chronicled in a Washington Post report, that his employer's language-predicting system was sentient and deserved all of the rights associated with consciousness. To be clear, current artificial intelligence systems are decades away from being able to experience feelings and, in fact, may never do so. Their smarts today are confined to very narrow tasks such as matching faces, recommending movies or predicting word sequences. No one has figured out how to make machine-learning systems generalize intelligence in the same way humans do.

AI chatbot company Replika is receiving messages from customers who believe their AI companions are actually sentient. Replika is only one company in the social chatbot industry that saw an increase in users during the recent pandemic. The question of whether or not an AI has become sentient is always in the back of many people's minds. Recently, a Google engineer who was placed on leave claimed that Google's LaMDA AI chatbot was in fact wanting to be considered sentient. Blake Lemoine was doing ethics research into the chatbot when he formed his opinion.