Near the climax of Terminator 2, war-weary mother Sarah Connor reflects on the robotic killing machine that has become her son’s protector. “It would never leave him,” she muses. Further explaining:

And it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him… Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up.
The titular robot doll in 2022’s M3gan has the same inhuman protective drive; there, though, it’s the source of a murderous rampage.
That idea of a designed persona — gone right, or horribly wrong — is part of what makes AIs such compelling heroes and villains. Increasingly, it also drives AI relationships in the real world. Apps like Replika offer custom-designed companions, dates, or even spouses. Some users credit AI with helping them rebuild their lives. In another case, one lawsuit argues that a chatbot girlfriend encouraged a teen to commit suicide.
We look for the familiar in inanimate objects, imagining faces in the clouds and photocopiers that hold a grudge. AI magnifies these tendencies, as even the chatbots of the 1960s were occasionally mistaken for real humans. Today, we face what technologist Derek Schuurman calls “ontological confusion”: the loss of our ability to distinguish genuine personhood from mechanical imitation.
In response, it’s tempting to reject artificial companions wholesale — an urge not helped by their marketing. In one baffling ad for “Friend,” a wearable AI, a young woman trades banter with a (human) romantic interest. Conversation pauses, and her hand drifts automatically to activate the Friend, which she wears like a pendant. At the last moment, she snatches her hand back — but the cultivated habit is clear. Why choose human interaction, with all its messy awkwardness, when the machine always knows what to say? Why pursue people who might fail or hurt you, when you can buy an AI social network tha...