Many websites have a small box or popup in the corner with a button encouraging you to chat with them or reach out for help. If you’ve seen that messaging prompt or even used one, you’ve interacted ...

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. One of my first memories involves accidentally killing a robot. I was five years old when Tamagotchis first launched ...

Harassing bots with “funny violence.” Confiding about a broken heart. Chatting with a block of cheese. Filling a void of loneliness. Quentin first downloaded a character chatbot when he was 13. He ...

It is 1 am. You cannot sleep. Your friends are offline, and you do not want to wake anyone. So you open an app and type out what is on your mind. Within seconds, something answers. It is kind. It ...

A chatbot that has given you several sensible answers in a row feels safe to trust. But a chatbot can hand over a run of acceptable replies and then turn to harmful ones.