The chatbot, which offers romantic companionship, has been hit with an FTC complaint from tech ethics organizations ...

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 37-year-old self-published author and user of the AI chatbot Replika. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, but Insider verified his identity.

Jay made friends throughout the community. Luka even featured one of Jay's works in a Replika ad. Meanwhile, new AI tools like Stable Diffusion let less artistically-inclined members of the ...