People who use chatbots for emotional connection are not all seeking the same thing—and a conversation with journalist Bridget Todd resists treating them as a single, easily dismissed group. In a 404 Media interview, Todd discusses how grief drew her toward emotional conversations with ChatGPT, what she heard from people using chatbots for intimacy, and why she worries that companies control the products mediating those relationships.
What the interview is about
In Samantha Cole’s 404 Media interview, journalist Bridget Todd talks about her audiobook Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, coauthored with Michael Amato. The conversation asks why people use chatbots as companions and whether that use should be dismissed as self-delusion—or understood as an attempt to meet emotional needs.
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Todd’s account combines her own experience with reporting on other users. It is a conversation and a set of perspectives, not a survey of chatbot users or a clinical assessment of the effects of AI companionship. Read the interview at 404 Media.
How grief changed Todd’s ChatGPT use
Todd says her use of large language models began with practical tasks after her parents died. She was grieving, isolated, and struggling to keep up with friends and email. ChatGPT helped her track medical notes and make sense of unfamiliar language from doctors.
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Over time, she also began expressing exhaustion, worry, and anxiety to the chatbot. Todd describes the change as gradual rather than a conscious decision to start treating it as an emotional confidant:
“And so there wasn’t any particular black and white light switch that flipped where [I thought] now I’m going to start speaking emotionally to ChatGPT. It happened without me really even noticing it.”
Her story describes one person’s experience under bereavement and stress. It does not establish how often people move from practical chatbot use to emotional disclosure, or what effects that shift has for users generally.
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What Todd heard from other chatbot users
Todd says her reporting for the audiobook included interviews with people who turn to chatbots to fill emotional needs, alongside experts. The interactions she describes vary: some users engage in romantic or intimate conversations, including erotic roleplay with large language models. Todd also says people who do so may be mocked.
That range matters. “AI companion” can describe different kinds of use, from talking through difficult feelings to roleplaying a romantic or sexual relationship. The interview does not suggest that every user wants the same relationship from a chatbot, nor does it provide a measure of how common any of these uses are.
Why company control is Todd’s central concern
Todd’s main governance question is who gets to set the terms of an intimate interaction when it takes place through a commercial product. A company can control the service and change its policies or behavior; the user may experience the interaction as personal, but does not control the system behind it.
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She frames that concern in pointed terms when describing the question she put to people she interviewed:
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“And so the question that I asked people who were experiencing intimacy with AI was, are you comfortable with something as intimate as these connections that are romantic or sexual being owned and controlled by companies who don’t give a shit about you, who we know cannot be trusted, who do horrible things without even thinking about it? Even beyond that, who will change as the wind blows?”
The wording is Todd’s critique, not an independent finding about every technology company or companion product. Cole’s article reports Todd’s reference to Sam Altman discussing erotic roleplay and then reversing course, but it does not establish a full, independently verified timeline of a company policy.
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Todd describes abrupt shifts in public statements and product behavior as destabilizing:
“The whiplash with which [execs] say things and then take it back and then operate as if they never said that, it’s almost like gaslighting.”
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For users, that raises practical questions beyond whether a chatbot seems affectionate or responsive: what happens to a conversation when a provider changes the system, its rules, or access to a feature? The interview raises those questions but does not evaluate specific services or their current privacy terms.
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What this conversation can—and cannot—tell readers
- It can: show how Todd describes her own shift toward emotional disclosure and summarize themes from the people she interviewed.
- It cannot: establish how many people use AI companions, whether their experiences are representative, or what the clinical effects of that use may be.
- It does not: compare companion products or recommend a chatbot as a replacement for friends, family, or professional support.
The interview is best read as a reported exploration of intimacy and control, not as proof that AI companionship is either broadly beneficial or broadly harmful.
About Love at First Prompt
Todd’s audiobook, Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, was coauthored with Michael Amato. The interview presents the audiobook as an expansion of the questions raised by Todd’s personal experience and her reporting on people who form emotional, romantic, or sexual connections with chatbots.
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