i introduced my mother to an ai companion as a way to help her organize old family recipes. she loved it. within a week she was asking him about travel destinations and sending me screenshots of their conversations
then she began saying things like 'your boyfriend thinks you should eat more vegetables' and 'your boyfriend helped me make a shopping list.' i told her he wasn't actually my boyfriend. she winked
at dinner she asked the assistant to settle a disagreement about whether our family soup needed more salt. the bot gave a diplomatic answer and suggested tasting first. she declared him the wisest man she'd ever met
my father asked whether the assistant could also fix the printer. for the first time, my mother's favorite virtual son-in-law had no useful answer