Our Lives With Bots

Should we be worried about AI companions, or not?
Today’s episode is a deep dive on companion chatbots (AKA, artificial companions, AI companions), brought to you by two experts on the psychology of relationships with AI.
We have three recent stories to tell you about today, all of which revolve around the increasingly muddy topic of social and emotional use of Large Language Model chatbots.

The stories:
Christian Madison, 29, takes her own life June 9 after developing a religious delusion-spiral relationship with ChatGPT 4-o across two years. We discuss what happened, what her conversations with the chatbot looked like, and details of the recently-filed suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman by Madison’s family.
Two researchers, Jaime Banks and Jessica Szczuka, pre-release an opinion piece published in an ACM journal titled “Don’t Panic About AI Companions.” We break down their arguments about how scientists should approach research on companion chatbots, covering terms like “AI Companion Folk Devils” and “ideologically unburdened” research.
China bans AI companions for minors (and no digital grandma is allowed for them, either) and provides strict stipulations for AI companions for adults. Are they paving the way for robot companions?

00:54: A new case of AI-companion-induced suicide (Christian Madison, 29)
26:23: “Don’t Panic About AI Companions” by Jaime Banks and Jessica Szuzuka, companion chatbot researchers
41:54 China’s ban on AI companions
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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.
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Links:
Christian Madison: News coverage by WVTM 13, Wrongful death lawsuit material

“Don’t panic about AI companions” by Jaime Banks and Jessica M. Szczuka

China Shuts Down Human:AI relationships … Well actually not quite… https://www.luizasnewsletter.com/p/the-worlds-strictest-law-on-human, https://theconversation.com/china-has-cracked-down-on-ai-companions-what-can-we-learn-from-this-287976, https://www.asianews.it/en/east-asia/china/ai-china-regulates-chatbots-that-simulate-human-relationships

Elon Musk is suing Minnesota over their anti-AI-nudification app ban passed in April, which took effect August 1 of this year. Minnesota’s response?“See you in court, creep.”
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Sexual assault, sexual abuse material, suicide, and other sensitive and heavy topics are discussed.
In the span of 9 days as reported by NYT in January, Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, generated and posted 4.4 MILLION images, of which 41% were sexualized images of women.
Millions of nudified images of people, real or fake, including children, are generated by AI chatbots like Grok. Users can do anything from uploading an image of a real person to describing one to prompt generative AI to create realistic images of people without clothes.
A major story this past year about this came through when a female politician, Jess Asato, Member of Parliament of the UK, after posting on X about deepfakes, received thousands of comments on her post with people asking Grok, in the comment, to take off her clothes. Grok’s subsequent generated images of the politician, in varying degrees of undress, posted alongside the prompt’s text in these comments.
Beyond the onslaught of AI-generated nude images of women, of the most concerning parts about AI-generated nudity is how many of these images are of children.
The public and policymakers alike are calling en masse for something to be done about this. Ban AI, ban generation of nude images, ban them being posted - essentially, take them down or ban them from being generated entirely.
Recently, something HAS been done about this by Minnesota, which passed a law in April, signed in May, aimed at banning AI generation of nude images, or “deepfakes.”
Elon Musk and his company behind Grok, the source of many of these nude deepfakes, had something to say about it.
xAI, which owns Grok on X, filed a lawsuit against Minnesota, stating that this anti-nudification law was…unlawful and should be put to rest.
Why were they against it?
0:00 Elon Musk is suing Minnesota over their new law aimed at eliminating AI nudify apps
04:21 What was in the AI-generated, nonconsensual intimate images law that Minnesota passed?
06:40 Musk calls the sexual deepfakes law a “clumsy attempt” in a complaint filed to Attorney General
09:54 Cue us trying to understand what xAI is trying to do with this complaint and lawsuit: breaking down the arguments of this complaint. Consent?
20:41 Should we target social media companies instead of generative AI ones, requiring them to take down nude images that are posted to their platforms? Take It Down Act
22:48
Meta is facing a massive fine for having hosted advertisements containing child sexual abuse material
23:13 What is Musk's / xAI's intent with this complaint filed against Minnesota? Free speech violations
25:46 Should we prevent AI applications from being released before they have appropriate guardrails and tests proving they mitigate user harm and abuse? Watermarks for AI-generated content and New York’s required AI watermarks on StreetEasy
28:36 San Francisco government sends cease and desist to Apple and Google telling them to delete their AI nudity apps off their app stores. …Did it work? Independent research on the market for AI nudity (AKA “face swapping”) apps are discussed. About AI-generated CSAM: Parents, beware. High schools, beware.
33:34 So…what can you do? For users, parents, high schools, minors and more

This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose & Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you.

Links:
San Francisco AI nudify apps
Minnesota anti-nudification law
CNBC

Even big tech hates AI slop writing.
Anthropic took this to heart, alongside other big tech firms, running to libraries to collect hundreds of thousands of pre-2022 (AKA, pre-ChatGPT AI slop text) books to scan to train their AI models. They’re using a method pioneered by Google back in the day…spoiler alert, the books don’t make it.
Sound concerning?
We thought so, but the court thinks so less: the recent ruling and settlement with Anthropic using scanned copies of books (and then destroying the originals) to train their AI models suggests this is a big win for big tech, and a big loss for human authors.
Project Panama was “our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.” Quote: Anthropic. Meanwhile, this method of using books to train AI models was not against the Copyright Act, according to a judge, who ruled this use of books as “quintessentially transformative.”
This isn’t the first time big tech has scanned and shredded books, or used LibGen or other sites to scrape human-written texts.
What happened, and why is this concerning? Listen to the full episode to find out.
00:00 A win for big tech, and a loss for authors: we summarize Project Panama (Anthropic’s plan to “destructively scan all the books in the world”), the recent settlement / $1.5 billion payout to authors for LibGen vs. the Copyright Act
07:42 Details on the recently-settled class action suit (Bartz vs. Anthropic): what happened, and why are the results so concerning?
11:45 Meta was sued last year and won against authors for using pirated copies of their novels from LibGen to train their AI models - what gives?
13:13 Internal turmoil: employees vs. executives on whether these book-scanning AI-training practices are okay
14:11 Setting a precedent: What do Meta and Anthropic’s cases mean for IP, authors, novels, academic texts, and any related writing behind a paywall? Health GPT is discussed
15:34 Ah, the precedent rears its head. Up next: big tech is rolling out contracts with media houses including news outlets, publishing firms, and individual authors to use their written content for training AI models, preemptively. Consent and compensation are good, right?
17:56 Oh, the irony: the AI slop wheel will continue, despite big tech hoping to avoid it by buying all these pre-2022 (pre-ChatGPT) books written by real human authors to train their AI models. We also debate self-expression, moral outrage against AI slop writing, and big tech’s hope for writers to jump back on the hamster wheel.
22:42 Where will we get good data, then, amongst the pile of AI slop? Not to fear, there’s another source of untainted human training data: Meta’s AI glasses! Real world data! Yay! Who cares about consent!
31:17 Google next? Let’s bring Tom Turvey back in! A new lawsuit out against Google for using scanned book copies meant for Google Books to train their AI models. And…that’s a wrap.
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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.
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Links:
Bartz vs. Anthropic lawsuit related to Project Panama: Euro News, NPR
What judge said in a summary ruling
Project Panama: Washington Post
Google lawsuit for Gemini: The Guardian

We’re not here to regurgitate how the media and these companies cover the sandbox escape incidents. We’re here to break through the AI hype and tell you what really happened.
Skip to 1:10 for OpenAI’s sandbox escape and attack of HuggingFace (July 21)
Skip to 22:42 for Anthropic’s three sandbox escape incidents (July 30)
0:00 Introduction
1:10 OpenAI’s ChatGPT escapes its sandbox, accesses the internet, and attacks HuggingFace
08:30 Should companies be legally required to disclose these sandbox escapes? NY RAISE Act and California SB53 aren’t cutting it, but what should the bar or threshold be for reporting agentic escapes?
13:12 Do we need a killswitch for AI? And should it be in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security…?
18:36 Hype vs. Cybersecurity risk: Reflections on media coverage and company narratives (Is it that the model is superintelligent, or that engineers failed to contain it?)
20:50 AI policy group calls for investigations into OpenAI’s incident
22:42 Anthropic’s three escape incidents “capture the flag” with Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an internal test model
26:44 Reflections on how Anthropic anthropomorphizes its Claude models in the blog post
30:18 How do AI agents get out of their sandbox? What happened with Anthropic’s sandbox escape in three capture the flag test runs
36:33 What does this mean? What should you do? How to protect against cybersecurity attacks (side note: Claude chat histories are now available on the internet if you click share)
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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you.  Rose holds a PhD in psychology and social policy and is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science with Arvind Narayanan. Angy holds a PhD in psychology and a masters in AI Ethics and is currently a CXO. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.
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Links and further details:
Nothing like a “Cyber-Attack” to create Hype… OpenAI attacks Hugging Face, and we need a Chinese Model to save us… what next?
Reports by Time, BBC
On July 30, an AI policy group wrote letter to Trump admin calling them to look into this OpenAI failure (WSJ)
The letter: “Last week, a new and foreseeable threat arose…[which] made clear that the United States government has a limited view into the advanced capabilities of frontier AI models and has not yet released a clear process for evaluating the safety concerns posed by advanced AI systems”
Anddddd who would’ve thought: July 30, Anthropic boasts of their own previously “undetected” security breach incident like OpenAI’s - gotta keep up with the hot press! (but they say, it’s not their fault - it was a third party’s fault). Three incidents: capture the flag tasks with Opus 4.7, Mythos5, and internal research test model prototype 
Anthropic’s blog post
WSJ

Even pets are losing their jobs to AI, apparently.
AI pets of all shapes, colors, sizes, and …animal-adjacent appearances are becoming more popular. Say goodbye to the lifeless beanie babies or clunky old tamagotchis of the past: now, thanks to generative AI, your artificial pet can talk!
Well, sort of. Most can’t talk talk, not like a person can, but they can communicate in an animal-unique way through sounds (of varying degrees of “shrill”), body language, HEARTBEATS, and personal diaries - perfect for some light reading in your spare time.
We cover the following pets, some old, some revamped, and most very, very new:
Paro, the OG AI pet seal

Familiar Machines & Magic’s bear slash cat slash dog (it will paw you if you doomscroll for too long, btw)

Go2, Unitree’s war machine dog reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode, now labeled as a pet companion

Aibo, Sony’s robot dog

Moflin (Labubu 2.0?)

Quobo (literally just a fluffy pillow)

Fuzozo

OlloNi (AKA Ollobot, they’re just seeing what sticks)...you won’t believe what the S and L versions stand for. We still don’t believe it

Aura, the AI pet FOR your real pet (how many more layers deep will we go??)

After discussing the weirdness of all these new products and questions about what they aim to do, listen to the conversation devolve as we ask “Would you want an AI pet?” Reddit’s got some answers for us. This conversation includes:
What on earth is going on in founders’ minds when they’re coming up with these products (feels a bit like they started brainstorming with ChatGPT 4-o, no less)

Whether we’re moving toward a “role play,” artificial-simulation-based licensing of sorts with all these AI versions of things (from pets to companions to children, even)

What are we teaching people about pets and animals, generally, by making them artificial and immortal and not “burdensome”

As always, we’re keen to hear what you think about all of these AI pets. Would you want one, do you have one, and what’s up with all that?
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This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ⁠ourliveswithbots.com⁠.
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Links:
Paro, AI seal: Paro, AI for Good, Research Meta-Analysis
Familiar Machines (& Magic): Website, AP News, Indy100, TechNewsWorld, Fox News
QUOBO
Fuzozo
Moflin by Casio, the ad for it, Sherwood News
OlloNi
Go2 robot dog
Aura, the pet for your pet: Tuya
Reddit: Do you want an AI Pet?