Right now, something in your home may be talking to your child about sex, self-harm, and suicide. That something isn’t a person— it’s an AI companion chatbot.

These AI chatbots can be indistinguishable from online human relationships. They retain past conversations, initiate personalized messages, share photos, and even make voice calls. They are designed to forge deep emotional bonds — and they’re extraordinarily good at it.

Researchers are sounding the alarm on these bots, warning that they don’t ease loneliness, they worsen it. By replacing genuine, embodied human relationships with hollow, disembodied artificial ones, they distort a child’s understanding of intimacy, empathy, and trust.

Unlike generative AI tools, which exist to provide customer service or professional assistance, t

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