Wait, the guy was Simone-ing himself with a waifu chatbot? I heard the site name and outcome and assumed this was a nudification bullying ordeal. That at least would have worrisome questions about making bad things possible versus making bad things easier, and whether general-purpose applications excuse foolproof access to the worst abuses of a given technology. This… this is dumb. This is really fucking dumb.

accusing the company of blame and that the teen was deceived and manipulated by a chatbot

I’m not convinced they could reliably make these things recommend a brand of dish soap. The fuck kind of manipulation is the company supposed to be at fault for?

This is so stupid that I don’t even expect the general public to clutch their pearls. How do you describe this in any way that a normal rando’s immediate reaction isn’t just ‘… what?’ This teen wasn’t bullied by an imaginary girlfriend. Unless I’ve missed something, the bot did not somehow suggest this course of action, unprovoked. (Then again, it’s based on Game Of Thrones, so that might come up.)

Side note, fuck commenters like Akhilesh for calling a ‘that’s fucked up, we’re gonna try to prevent that’ response as if that means ‘the company has accepted this.’ What would it look like if it looked like what you wanted? Flat denial? This attitude is a trap. They do nothing, people cry they do nothing. They do something, even something pointless, the same people cry that it’s proof of guilt.