From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketrow-F. This is the Daily.

Artificial intelligence has changed the way millions of people write emails, conduct research, and seek advice.

All things that are essential, but mostly unfeeling. Today, my colleague Kashmir Hill, on a woman whose relationship with a chatbot,

went much further than that, and what her story means for love in the age of AI.

It's Tuesday, February 25th.

Cashmere, welcome back to the show.

Thank you.

So you're known here at the Times for covering some of the strangest, most futuristic corners of the tech world.

But even for you, it seems like this story of this woman

and her relationship with a chatbot really stood out. So tell me about it.

Honestly, it blew my mind.

Generative AI has been on my radar as a tech reporter, you know, once OpenAI released

ChatGBTGBT, allT, all of a sudden,

the kind of world of AI chatbots exploded, and a lot of people started using them.

And at first it was just like a better Google, you know?

It gives you information in a really nice, easy-to-digest package.

But then people started using these chatbots in other kinds of ways as a writing partner,

like writing stories together, as a therapist, really using it as a sounding board.

And they're starting to think about it as a person because it feels like you're talking to a person.

And so I was just noticing in the AI space more and more reports of people having relationships with chatbots and just felt like it was this growing trend and I really wanted to understand it.

And I came across this woman, Irene, who had formed quite a strong

attachment to Chachibati. Okay, let's talk about her. Tell me what her story is. So I first talked to

...