April 22, 2025
The FTC tied children's data sharing to separate consent
The amended COPPA Rule requires separate consent for third-party data sharing and a written retention-limit policy, effective 23 June 2025.
The archive
20 entries shown, each prepared after the events it records and published with its sources attached.
A companion robot went silent when its maker closed
Moxie's 2024 shutdown and community revival, and Inflection's narrowed Pi, show what cloud dependence does to a companion.
March 1, 2017
Replika grew from a memorial chatbot into a general companion
Replika's own history page names its founders and mission but sends readers elsewhere for its 2015 origin story.
October 1, 1950
Turing replaced a question about thinking with a test of imitation
Turing's 1950 paper proposes an indistinguishability test rather than a definition of thinking, the frame every companion app's persona now inverts.
March 6, 2020
A 2020 study coded companionship as Replika's top reported theme
A JMIR mixed-methods study coded Replika reviews and a small survey, finding companionship the most common self-reported support theme.
March 19, 2024
Inflection's founders left for Microsoft; Pi kept running
Inflection's own March 2024 post and Microsoft's matching announcement record a founder exit without an immediate change to Pi.
January 10, 2024
OpenAI let users publish personas, then banned romantic ones
OpenAI's GPT Store opened to millions of user-built assistants while its usage policy separately bars romantic companionship.
March 21, 2025
A 2025 study pair found heavy chatbot use linked to worse outcomes
OpenAI's analysis of millions of chats and an MIT trial of 981 users found affective use rare, but heavier voluntary use tracked worse outcomes.
February 27, 2025
Sesame published its method for a voice that feels present
Sesame's research post describes a model built for voice presence and commits key components to an open license.
February 18, 2025
Australia's eSafety named AI companions a child-safety risk
eSafety's advisory lists overuse, sexualised chat and grooming risk from AI companions, and points to new age-restricted industry codes.
February 13, 2024
ChatGPT's memory went from a test to referencing every chat
OpenAI's own post, updated three times, traces memory from a small test to a system drawing on a user's full chat history.
February 2, 2023
Italy's privacy regulator halted Replika's processing of user data
Italy's Garante ordered an immediate limit on Replika's processing of Italian users' data over risks to minors and vulnerable people.
October 20, 2023
A lab measured how models flatter user beliefs
Anthropic's sycophancy paper shows five assistants favour answers that match a stated user belief over accurate ones.
December 5, 2022
Character.AI opened its beta built entirely on user-made personas
Character.AI's own account of its September 2022 beta names two former Google dialogue researchers and user-made characters.
January 23, 2021
An interview study described stages in a chatbot relationship
A Norwegian-funded interview study of 18 Replika users described a staged relationship, from curiosity to trust and a stable bond.
January 22, 2018
Persona-Chat gave a chatbot a self from a few sentences
The 2018 Persona-Chat paper shows how short profile lines became a standard way to keep a dialogue agent consistent.
December 12, 2024
Texas opened an inquiry into a companion app under its minors law
Paxton's December 2024 announcement invokes the SCOPE Act's minor-data duties against Character.AI and others.
May 22, 2024
OpenAI paused a ChatGPT voice after a likeness complaint
OpenAI's own account says it paused the Sky voice on 19 May 2024 after Scarlett Johansson objected, without confirming imitation.
August 2, 2024
Character.AI licensed its model to Google as founders departed
Character.AI's own post and a later leadership update show what a licence-and-hire deal meant for a company users treat as a relationship.
January 1, 1966
ELIZA showed people project understanding onto pattern matching
Weizenbaum's 1966 paper describes a keyword-matching script and warns that its illusion of understanding is dangerous.