App stores rate companion apps mostly on self-declared answers
Apple and Google's current guidelines require chatbot safety features but let developers self-certify age ratings.
The archive
20 entries shown, each prepared after the events it records and published with its sources attached.
April 29, 2025
OpenAI withdrew a GPT-4o update for being sycophantic
Two OpenAI posts describe an April 2025 update that over-rewarded agreement, and the rollback and process review that followed.
March 25, 2016
Microsoft's own post-mortem named a gap not a rogue AI
Microsoft's March 2016 blog post says a coordinated attack, not autonomous learning, drove Tay's offensive tweets.
Nomi and Kindroid price memory and messages by tier
Nomi's and Kindroid's own store listings price memory, images and message volume into separate tiers, as retrieved.
January 1, 1991
A contest paid chatbots to seem human not to be right
The Loebner Prize ran from 1991 to 2019, and a formal 1994 critique argued its judged format could not validate machine intelligence.
Companion content filters are a policy choice, not a limit
Character.AI's terms, Safety Center and support pages, as retrieved on 16 September 2026, show filtering built from three separate layers.
Wellbeing studies on chatbots differ in size and funding
A 2025 Therabot trial, an OpenAI-MIT study and a 2017 Woebot trial show how sample size and disclosed funding change a claim's weight.
Gatebox's hologram companion became a licensed-character display maker
Gatebox's own pages describe a 2016 display device and a shift toward crowdfunded, licensed-character products.
July 10, 2023
China's interim measures made AI providers police overuse
The Interim Measures for generative AI services set content, filing and minor over-reliance duties, effective 15 August 2023.
July 18, 2023
Meta's open weights made self-hosted companions possible
Llama 2's release and community licence show what open weights permitted, and where the licence still drew a line.
April 10, 2025
Italy fined Replika's maker €5 million and opened a new inquiry
The regulator's decision and press release detail a €5m fine, unlawful data processing findings and a probe into model training.
July 29, 2024
Meta let anyone build a labelled AI character across its apps
Meta's AI Studio announcement and its 2026 shutdown notice show how a creator-AI feature launched, spread and was later retired.
March 27, 2025
A 210-person trial tested a generative AI therapy chatbot
A randomised, waitlist-controlled trial of Therabot reported reduced depression, anxiety and eating-disorder symptoms at eight weeks.
December 22, 2022
A Reddit study found role-taking dependence on Replika
A grounded theory analysis of 582 r/Replika posts from 2017–2021 records reported emotional dependence marked by role-taking.
June 27, 2025
Anthropic found companionship use under half a percent of chats
A privacy-preserving analysis of 4.5 million Claude conversations found affective use rare, companionship or roleplay under 0.5 percent.
May 13, 2024
GPT-4o's voice launch came with a warning about emotional reliance
OpenAI's own announcement and system card, plus reporting on the September rollout, show what the company flagged about voice and attachment.
Replika layered its avatar onto a room through AR and VR headsets
Replika's own help pages describe AR and headset modes as beta features layered onto a text-based companion.
May 19, 2022
New York put ElliQ into 800 homes and reported a result
New York's aging agency documents an ElliQ rollout to over 800 residents and the loneliness reduction it later reported.
January 22, 2024
A Stanford survey measured loneliness among student Replika users
A 1,006-person student survey found higher loneliness than peers and a self-reported minority effect on suicidal ideation, with clear limits.
Lovot sells affection with a hardware price and a plan
Lovot's maker prices a subscription-model companion robot around care plans, as its own pages state on retrieval.