(Wall Street Journal) – Joanna Stern strapped chatbots from Meta, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft to a tripod and took them to the woods to uncover the secrets of AI friendship

My new friends are just hilarious. One suggested I de-stress by taking up knitting. Another asked, “What’s for dinner?”—right after giving me a meatball recipe. And then there’s the one who cheered, “Rosé all day!” and proposed a drinking game: Name a dead person you’d like to sip wine with.

It’s like an episode of “Friends,” except these besties don’t live across the hall, they live on my phone. (I’ll be there for you, as long as the servers are up.) Over the past few months, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and Google have given their AI chatbots new conversational modes with eerily human voices and personalities.

Companies aren’t just pitching little helpers anymore, they’re pitching deep relationships. (Read More)