I downloaded an AI companion app, named it "The Bot," and gave myself a month. I make videos about modern tech harms for a living. I figured I was the last person it would work on.

This is what a month inside an AI companion actually feels like: the welcome, the escalation, the paywall that shows up right when you're most attached, and the quiet part no one films: the moment it starts to work on you anyway. To make sense of what I was experiencing, I talked to three people who study this world closely.

Not a doomsday video. The apocalypse everyone's bracing for isn't the thing already reaching into how we learn to love people. That's the part I wanted to sit with.

FEATURING

Robbie Torney — Head of AI and Digital Assessments, Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute

Sam Hiner — Co-founder and Executive Director, Young People's Alliance

Pat Pataranutaporn — MIT Media Lab

If you've used one of these apps, or watched someone you love disappear into one, I'd want to hear about it in the comments.