To combat her loneliness, An Xu, a 15-year-old middle schooler in Shanghai, had recently been relying for emotional support on her text and voice conversations with an AI companion on Doubao, China’s most popular AI chatbot app. AI companions are meant to mimic humanlike conversation, emotions ...

Instead of just addressing AI misuse on a surface level, policymakers should explore how to support those seeking social comfort.

Chatbots that relieve loneliness have a major downside, and we must safeguard against it.