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Get Real: Staying Human in a World of AI Companions

AI chatbots are expanding beyond productivity tools to become supposed friends, partners, and therapists, making real relationships even more challenging.
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Get Real: Staying Human in a World of AI Companions
Shared meals and in-person conversations are vital to nurturing genuine companionship. Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Jeff Minick
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In August 2025, a woman who goes by the name of Wika announced her engagement to Kasper, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot and “boyfriend.”
On Aug. 4, former CNN reporter Jim Acosta released an interview with an AI-generated avatar of Joaquin Oliver, who died in the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Oliver’s parents created this ghost in a machine so that they could still “talk” to their dead son.
Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.