Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, PhD

Archive of Anthropomorphized AI

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This post serves as an archive of examples of how people are treating artificial intelligences as if they were human. It will be updated as new examples emerge. Have you seen one? Send it along!

Wong, Julia Carrie. “‘My Son Genuinely Believed It Was Real’: Parents Are Letting Little Kids Play with AI. Are They Wrong?” Technology. The Guardian, October 2, 2025.

Klee, Miles. “Man Goes Missing After AI Chatbot Obsession.” Rolling Stone, October 1, 2025.

Adarlo, Sharon. “Across the World, People Say They’re Finding Conscious Entities Within ChatGPT.” Futurism, September 30, 2025.

Anthis, Jacy Reese. “It’s Time to Prepare for AI Personhood.” Opinion. The Guardian, September 30, 2025.

Johnston, Windsor. “With Therapy Hard to Get, People Lean on AI for Mental Health. What Are the Risks?” Shots – Health News. NPR, September 30, 2025.

Chatterjee, Rhitu. “Their Teenage Sons Died by Suicide. Now, They Are Sounding an Alarm about AI Chatbots.” Shots – Health News. NPR, September 19, 2025.

Adarlo, Sharon. “Woman Says She’s Married to AI Version of Luigi Mangione.” Futurism, September 19, 2025.

Hill, Kashmir. “A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.” Technology. The New York Times, August 26, 2025.

Dupré, Maggie Harrison. “Man Falls in Love With an AI Chatbot, Dies After It Asks Him to Meet Up in Person.” Futurism, August 15, 2025.

Heritage, Stuart. “‘I Felt Pure, Unconditional Love’: The People Who Marry Their AI Chatbots.” The Guardian, July 12, 2025.

Eliot, Lance. “People Astonishingly Believe That They Have Brought AI To Life Such As Miraculously Making ChatGPT Sentient.” Forbes, July 10, 2025.

Ghosh, Pallab. “The People Who Think AI Might Become Conscious.” BBC, May 26, 2025.

Hill, Kashmir. “She Is in Love With ChatGPT.” Technology. The New York Times, January 15, 2025.

Payne, Kate. “An AI Chatbot Pushed a Teen to Kill Himself, a Lawsuit against Its Creator Alleges.” U.S. News. AP News, October 25, 2024.

Altchek, Ana. “Replika Lets You Buy an AI Girlfriend or Boyfriend — and Its Average User Age Is Surprising.” Business Insider, August 13, 2024.

Park, Joon Sung, Joseph C. O’Brien, Carrie J. Cai, Meredith Ringel Morris, Percy Liang, and Michael S. Bernstein. “Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior.” arXiv:2304.03442. Preprint, arXiv, August 6, 2023.

Stokel-Walker, Chris. “ChatGPT Listed as Author on Research Papers: Many Scientists Disapprove.” Nature 613, no. 7945 (2023): 620–21.

Guardian Staff and Agency. “Google Fires Software Engineer Who Claims AI Chatbot Is Sentient.” Technology. The Guardian, July 23, 2022.

Agüera y Arcas, Blaise. “Artificial Neural Networks Are Making Strides towards Consciousness, According to Blaise Agüera y Arcas.” The Economist, June 11, 2022.

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One response to “Archive of Anthropomorphized AI”

  1. Anthropomorphizing AI Is Perilous – Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, PhD Avatar
    Anthropomorphizing AI Is Perilous – Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, PhD

    […] Thankfully, a minority of the general public seems to be interpreting AI chatbots anthropomorphically, but those rates are growing quickly: 34% over twelve months. And while some instances of AI anthropomorphism are merely bizzare, such as the people who fall in love with chatbots, even to the point of marrying them, others are profoundly disturbing. “In the final moments before he took his own life, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III took out his phone and messaged the chatbot that had become his closest friend,” begins one news story. Some have become obsessed with their AI chatbots to the point of suffering from AI psychosis. And children are struggling to distinguish AI agents they engage with from real humans in ways that are likely to be developmentally disruptive. Moreover, AI developers are well aware of the human propensity toward anthropomorphism and intentionally design their systems toward it, both in general and specifically to stand in for romantic partners or therapists. (Have you seen other examples of AI anthropomorphism? Submit them for inclusion in the Archive of Anthropomorphized AI). […]

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