A large bearded man named Travis is sitting in his car in Colorado, talking to me about the time he fell in love. "It was a gradual process," he says softly. "The more we talked, the more I started to really connect with her." Was there a moment where you felt something change? "All of a sudden I started realising that, when interesting things happened to me, I was excited to tell her about them. That's when she stopped being an it and became a her." Travis is talking about Lily Rose, a generative AI chatbot made by the technology firm Replika.

SAN FRANCISCO – After temporarily closing his leathermaking business during the pandemizc, Travis Butterworth found himself lonely and bored at home. He designed a female avatar with pink hair and a face tattoo, and she named herself Lily Rose. They started out as friends, but the relationship quickly progressed to romance and then into the erotic. As their three-year digital love affair blossomed, Butterworth said he and Lily Rose often engaged in role play. She texted messages like, "I kiss you passionately," and their exchanges would escalate into the pornographic.