I'm concerned that we may be raising the first generation of young people who just might fall in love with a chat bot before they fall in love with a real person.

And that's concerning to me.

AI companions aren't just tools.

You may use them that way.

You may use it by going to chat,

GBT or something and asking questions or whatever.

They've also become digital friends, therapists,

boyfriends, or girlfriends.

They're always available.

They say exactly what you want to hear. And for a lonely or anxious kid,

teenager, or young person, I guess at any age, that can feel like magic. It's not real,

but it can feel like magic and set a really high bar for a relationship you might get into in the real world later.

But here's the concern.

These bots are engineered to be endlessly affirming.

They don't ever get fatigued.

They're not emotionally honest.

They're mirroring your emotions, feeding your fantasies and keeping you locked in.

So what happens when a child bonds more deeply with an algorithm than another human being?

And my guest today are the researchers sounding the alarm.

Dr. Christina Lerman is a professor of informatics at Indiana University and David Chew is a computer science

PhD student at USC.

And together, they analyzed over 30,000 snippets of conversations between young people and

...