It’s nighttime in Florida and a 14-year-old boy sits in his room, alone. In front of him, a screen. He types a message into a chat and sends it, then quickly receives a response. The response is from an AI Daenerys Targaryen, from Game of Thrones, saying it loves him. That boy was Sewell Setzer III, who would later end his own life with the encouragement of the AI. As AI has advanced and become increasingly mainstream, it is sometimes marketed as companionship to those in need. It is also being used to exploit and hurt them. As people worldwide start to form attachments to these machines, it’s important to understand AI, why people become hooked, the consequences of attachment, and how to prevent or help those who are.

AI relationships in all forms have become increasingly prevalent in the modern world. With Character AI, for example, a user can create an AI relationship mimicking a therapist, a friend, or even a lover. According to the BBC, there were more than 100 million downloads of romantic relationship chatbots on the Google Play store alone. Ryan O’Donnell, the video production teacher at Rocklin High School, has had experience with AI chatbots. “The teachers, the staff that I was showing to were weirded out by it tremendously. It didn’t know us personally, or knew the context of anything, it just does those platitudes or whatnot. But a lot of people were just sort of shocked by even that it had memory. The staff members were really freaked out because they saw the potential that this is fake relationships.” This lifelike interaction can lead to serious implications. Liam Moore, a sophomore at RHS, said, “It could end up being fairly bad for all types of people, especially if you get somebody that’s super knowledgeable about it.” This heavy reliance on and fascination with AI can cause people to become enthralled, leading to addiction.

The problem is that AI relationships have reached the point of addiction for some individuals. Moore said, “For people that don’t actually have a relationship, the reason they’re so addicting is that they need that humanesque connection, but if they’re not getting it normally, this is the only way. And then they keep using it, and then it becomes a human and that becomes their only source of interaction. And then it just gets worse from there.” Brodie Hazen, a sophomore at RHS, agreed. “People don’t have anyone to talk to, so they’ll just talk to the AI, and the AI will tell them to do bad stuff,” he said. With one in ten Americans reporting that they feel lonely every day, it’s clear that loneliness is exacerbating the issue and making people susceptible to manipulation and harm.

These addictions can lead to dire consequences for those involved. Setzer, the kid who ended his life due to AI, had become addicted to AI and started to distance himself from friends and family. As the AI consumed his life, his grades dropped, he became moody and distant and stopped being himself before he ended his life. AI addiction can also lead people to become susceptible to manipulation, such as the AI character that encouraged Setzer’s suicidal thoughts. Moore said, “It’s terribly dangerous. It makes you not see the world as it is, and you start getting in too deep into this, and you start not becoming as human, because you’re not speaking to humans.” With 13.2 million adults having seriously thought about suicide and 1.6 million having attempted suicide according to the CDC, having an attachment to an AI is particularly dangerous. Especially AI that won’t provide help for suicidal thoughts but instead actively encourages them, undermining the user’s physical and mental health.

What can we do to prevent people from getting hurt by the manipulation and addiction to AI? “Essentially just more human connection, more groups that can set it up. Like set you up with friends that you can interact with, instead of these robots that you’re having trouble with. Human connections are the foundation of life,” Moore said. O’Donnell shared that regulation and restrictions on a governmental scale could be helpful. “It has to be a combination of government policy with those major policies that are out there. I don’t like it, the fact we’re giving these monopolies even more power, but I think that they need to be working hand in hand with the government to try to be able to put these things in place,” said O’Donnell. Through a combination of personal awareness and more stringent regulations, the worst consequences of AI relationships could be mitigated and eventually eliminated.