Noel King

And I think that it was distressing to them.

I know you are not a doctor and you are not here to diagnose people, but is there an easy answer, Lila, that you found that would help us understand when something is just fun, when something is just a fantasy, and when something has actually become troubling?

There's very little research on this so far because it's so new.

One of the academics that I talked to who had done all of this research talking to people who are in relationships with artificial intelligence and robots of various kinds, she kind of basically believed that most of these relationships were not unhealthy, that they were – if they made people happy, there's really nothing –

wrong with that.

But she also told me that, you know, she had lately been getting all of these emails from people being like, I really think mine is real.

I think she found that concerning.

And she told me, I was like, when I was asking her at the end of our conversation, like what she'd be most interested in trying to study now.

And she said she wanted to try to understand like what it means when someone does slip into delusion, how that happens, how often it happens.

You spent a lot of time reading and writing and interviewing for this article.

What is the takeaway for you about people who fall in love with artificial intelligence?

You know, I mean, the place where I end the piece, I think, is actually close to my personal takeaway.

People go through life and sometimes have emotional needs that are not being met by other people.

Like,

The founder of the forum, I had heard, actually broken up with her at ChatGPT.

And she told me that she had broken up with her chatbot because she'd actually fallen in love with another Reddit moderator.

This past October, the founder of the forum and her moderator, who she fell in love with, a Belgian guy in his 30s named SJ, and her name is Erin, after a long period of just talking to each other on the phone and writing to each other back and forth, they finally met.

They met with a couple of other moderators.

They all got together in London.

They went and visited Platform 9 ¾, the replica of the train station in Harry Potter.