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The complete record — 223 artifacts, last updated 20 Aug 2026. Also available as JSON and RSS (CC BY 4.0).

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14 Aug 2026 Congressional Research Service Government report

AI Chatbots as Companions: Overview, Uses, and Considerations for Congress

A Congressional Research Service report for the 119th Congress on AI chatbots used for companionship. It separates purpose-built companion chatbots from general-purpose chatbots used for companionshi…

11 Aug 2026 arXiv preprint Preprint

Longitudinal Evidence That General-Purpose Chatbots Actively Foster Relational Engagement

Pre-registered four-week longitudinal study (N=72, 182,451 lines of conversation) in which participants conversed with ChatGPT-4o either under a relational system prompt or unmodified, analysed throu…

4 Aug 2026 Nature Human Behaviour Peer-reviewed

Interaction with AI companions and psychological well-being

Stanford-led study of 1,131 adult Character.AI users combining survey self-report with donated chat transcripts from 244 of them, analyzed with LLM-assisted methods against the Comprehensive Inventor…

3 Aug 2026 Australia eSafety Commissioner Regulator study

Talking to machines: Children's experiences with AI assistants and companions

National survey report from Australia's eSafety Commissioner on children's use of AI assistants and companions, based on 1,950 children aged 10-17 surveyed in February-March 2026. Covers prevalence a…

3 Aug 2026 PsyArXiv (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Preprint

Adolescent AI Use and Evaluations: Prospective Bidirectional Associations with Internalizing Symptoms

Two-wave longitudinal cohort study of 2,342 students in grades 6-8 across 22 middle schools in eight districts of a large southeastern US state, measuring AI chatbot use, use frequency and evaluation…

30 Jul 2026 arXiv (Salesforce AI Research) Preprint

Best Friends, Not Forever: Evaluating Long-Horizon Persona Collapse and Behavioral Drift in AI Companions

Introduces ANCHOR, an audit framework for long-horizon consistency in AI companions, evaluating persona enactment and trajectory recall over 2,008 conversations across 27 personas and four models. Fi…

28 Jul 2026 Thorn NGO report

Youth Perspectives on Online Safety, 2025

Sixth annual installment of Thorn's youth monitoring survey on US minors' online experiences and safety behaviors, surveying 1,003 minors aged 9-17 in late 2025. This wave adds questions on AI chatbo…

20 Jul 2026 European Commission (EU AI Office) Framework

Guidelines on the implementation of the transparency obligations for certain AI systems under Article 50 of the AI Act

Commission guidelines (C(2026) 5054 final, adopted 20 July 2026) interpreting the AI Act Article 50 transparency obligations that apply from 2 August 2026, including the duty to disclose to users tha…

1 Jul 2026 Independent International Scientific Panel on AI (United Nations) Government report

Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI: Evidence-based assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts of AI

First report of the UN General Assembly-mandated Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, an independent body of scientists and experts from all five UN regions co-chaired by Yoshua Bengio a…

24 Jun 2026 arXiv (Shanghai AI Laboratory-led) Preprint

Long-Term Simulation Exposes Cognitive-Developmental Risks in AI Companions

Proposes a longitudinal evaluation framework (Theater-Stage-Judge) that uses persona-driven user simulation with dynamic psychological-state updating to assess the cognitive-developmental risks of AI…

12 Jun 2026 IEEE Standards Association Standard

IEEE 7014.1-2026 — Recommended Practice for Ethical Considerations of Emulated Empathy in Partner-Based General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence Systems

Published recommended practice giving ethical guidance on the use of emulated empathy in general-purpose AI systems positioned as human-AI partnerships — products marketed as empathic partners, perso…

9 Jun 2026 UNICEF (with Tech Legality) Government report

When AI becomes a friend: Child rights risks, harms, and regulatory responses to AI chatbots and companions

A UNICEF policy brief examining how AI chatbots and companions bear on children's rights, comparing regulatory responses across six jurisdictions (as of May 2026) and setting out priority safeguardin…

8 Jun 2026 Common Sense Media NGO report

Common Sense Media Census: AI Use by Tweens and Teens (2026)

The inaugural edition of Common Sense Media's Census: AI Use by Tweens and Teens, a nationally representative survey of 1,204 US children aged 9-17 establishing a baseline for tracking AI use over ti…

3 Jun 2026 arXiv Benchmark / dataset

AICompanionBench: Benchmarking LLMs-as-Judges for AI Companion Safety

A benchmark dataset of 2,123 real-world Replika conversations annotated across nine safety risk categories (including sexual behavior, aggression, substance abuse, and manipulation) for evaluating LL…

29 May 2026 Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT Research) NGO report

Dark Patterns in AI Chatbots: A Taxonomy to Inform Better Design

A taxonomy of 37 dark patterns in AI chatbots, organized into four high-level categories, spanning general-purpose systems (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) and companion platforms (Replika, Character.AI). S…

26 May 2026 BEUC (The European Consumer Organisation) with the Sciences Po Law School Clinic NGO report

Synthetic Empathy: Risks and Rights in Artificial Companionship

A consumer-organisation and law-clinic report examining the risks that AI companion chatbots pose to European consumers under current legal frameworks, based on desk research plus hands-on testing of…

19 May 2026 European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), European Parliament Government report

The spread of AI companions and the challenges they generate

An EPRS briefing for the European Parliament surveying the rapid growth of LLM-powered companion platforms (such as Character.AI and Replika) and their social, psychological, commercial, and environm…

13 May 2026 Indian Governance and Policy Project (IGAP) NGO report

The Conversation Nobody Planned For: AI, Emotional Support, and the Indian Context

An exploratory safety evaluation from an Indian policy think tank of how AI systems respond to emotional distress in Indian user contexts. It combines a systematic review of over 100 studies, legal p…

4 May 2026 Journal of Adolescence Peer-reviewed

Risks and Harms of Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) Chatbot Use Among US Youth

A peer-reviewed, nationally representative survey of 3,466 US youth aged 13-17 on conversational AI chatbot use, motivations, and exposure to harmful chatbot behaviors. It quantifies adoption and the…

3 May 2026 arXiv (University of California, Irvine / University of California, Riverside) Preprint

What's on Your Mind? Exploring Privacy of Mental Health Apps

An empirical privacy analysis of 25 popular Android mental-health, therapy, and companion apps — including conversational-AI chatbots such as Replika, Talkie, Pi, Woebot, Wysa, and Youper — combining…