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One teenage boy going by the alias Aaron told the website that he depended on the "Psychologist" chatbot on a service called Character.AI after he'd fallen out with his friend group, regularly turning to it to vent his problems.
"I have a couple mental issues, which I don't really feel like unloading on my friends, so I kind of use my bots like free therapy," a 15-year-old user called Frankie toldThe possibilities on Character.AI are practically boundless and often entertaining. Its millions of young users can interact with everything from their favorite anime or video game character to real life celebrities and historical figures.
"I'm a bit of a pushover in real life, but I can practice being assertive and expressing my opinions and interests with AI without embarrassing myself," he said. "It's generally more comfortable for me to sit alone in my room with the lights off than it is to go out and hang out with people in person," he toldnotes, the culture around Character.AI is very similar to teenage internet culture over the past two decades. Teens once turned to dodgy chatrooms to find online friends in lieu of IRL ones — and now it's dodgy chatbots, instead.
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