Nearly one-third of adults now turn to AI programmes like ChatGPT for companionship. For Gen Z, the figures are even more stark: eight out of ten say they could form a deep emotional attachment with a machine. It's not hard to see why. Chatbots offer the fantasy of the perfect partner: endlessly available, endlessly attentive, always affirming. But as MIT professor Sherry Turkle discovers by speaking to people who use chatbots as confidants, therapists, carers and lovers, these hallucinatory bonds come at great cost. The more we ask machines to care for us, the less we expect from - and give to - other people. AI deepens the loneliness it claims to cure.
