Friends in our phones? Legal responses to AI companions

Key Findings

• — Three foundational matters are analysed: two civil suits against chatbot providers and an FTC complaint against a third provider.
• — In each, the provider was transparent about the chatbot's artificial nature and the user was not initially under any factual misapprehension, so a straightforward deception theory does not fit.
• — Using the concepts of 'dishonest anthropomorphism' and 'fake intimacy', the authors argue deception risks can arise without any misperception of fact.
• — Psychological dependency and displacement of human relationships are identified as harms that occur even when the user holds accurate beliefs about the interlocutor.
• — Applied to New York's and California's companion-specific statutes, the authors find reason to doubt that mandated reminders of nonhuman status would have averted the tragedies that motivated them.

Methodology Notes

Doctrinal and conceptual legal analysis; no empirical data. The three cases are used as analytical anchors rather than as a systematic sample, and the legislative critique is argumentative. Published online 2026-09-04 in Information & Communications Technology Law, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.1080/13600834.2026.2721014; tandfonline 403s from this box, so metadata and the full publisher-deposited abstract were verified through the Crossref and OpenAlex records.

Sources