Comment by recursive

It will be back. Maybe under another name or brand. There's clearly a demand for this kind of fake friendship. As models, hardware, and training improve, those that want to will be able to run this kind of thing offline. OpenAI won't be able to gatekeep it. Or perhaps another less scrupulous provider will step in. The problem here seems to be more like an unpatched vulnerability in humans. Kind of like opioid dependency.