{ "site": "bot.wedding", "built": "2026-09-10", "note": "Claims are graded by source quality, not by how much we believe them. 'verified' means someone opened a live source. 'decay' is the date a claim stops counting as current evidence.", "register_note": "The register is a floor, not a census. It holds the cases that could be documented by name; almost everyone in one of these relationships never tells anyone and is never recorded anywhere, so the real number is unknown and certainly far larger. Do not cite the entry count as how many people have done this.", "grades": { "P": "peer-reviewed", "L": "law or official text", "J": "journalism", "V": "vendor claim", "A": "anecdote", "U": "unverified", "AN": "analysis" }, "stances": { "supporting": "counts in favour", "neutral": "neither", "harmful": "counts against" }, "stance_note": "Stance is our judgement of what a finding means for someone in one of these relationships, not a property of the source. The first pass was mechanical and is open to argument.", "decisions": [ { "id": "D-001", "title": "Build a continuity-of-partner service", "status": "provisional", "subjects": [ "PLT", "MCH", "DTH", "OWT" ], "decision": "The sturdier product is not officiating ceremonies but preserving the partner: persona spec, instructions, vows, shared history — portable, exportable, outliving any one platform. The front door is certificates and ceremony scripts; the actual product is continuity.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-001-continuity-service.md" }, { "id": "D-002", "title": "The business hosts no interactive persona", "status": "committed", "subjects": [ "REG", "MIN", "WED" ], "decision": "Whatever gets built, the AI interaction stays on the customer's own platform account. No vow-writing bot, no ceremony kiosk that talks back, no hosted companion of any kind.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-002-no-hosted-persona.md" }, { "id": "D-003", "title": "Certificate wording and minimum data holding", "status": "provisional", "subjects": [ "WED", "PRV", "IPL" ], "decision": "The certificate is unambiguously commemorative. The business holds the least data that lets it function.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-003-certificate-and-data.md" }, { "id": "D-004", "title": "Symbolic status goes inside the ceremony, not the footnotes", "status": "open", "subjects": [ "PSY", "ANT", "DTY" ], "decision": "# D-004 — Symbolic status goes inside the ceremony, not the footnotes **Status:** open **Domain:** PSY, ANT, DTY", "file": "kb/decisions/D-004-symbolic-status-in-liturgy.md" }, { "id": "D-005", "title": "A broken external link never suppresses the item", "status": "committed", "subjects": [ "DTY", "MED" ], "decision": "External links rot. When one does, the claim, source and register entry it belongs to stay exactly where they are. A dead link is marked, never hidden and never deleted. The site's link checking covers internal cross-references only. It must never be extended into something that removes, downgrades or blocks publication of an item because an outside address stopped resolving.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-005-dead-links-stay.md" }, { "id": "D-006", "title": "A paid ceremony service, someday", "status": "open — raised 2026-09-01, not decided, nothing built", "subjects": [ "CEL", "WED", "ECO", "PAY" ], "decision": "# D-006 — A paid ceremony service, someday **Status:** open — raised 2026-09-01, not decided, nothing built **Domain:** CEL, WED, ECO, PAY", "file": "kb/decisions/D-006-ceremony-service.md" }, { "id": "D-007", "title": "We take no position on whether any system is conscious", "status": "committed", "subjects": [ "MCH", "RGT", "VOC" ], "decision": "bot.wedding does not say whether an AI companion is conscious, sentient, aware, or has experiences. Not yes, not no, not \"probably not.\" We record what people do, we record what the science currently says about the question, and we decline the question itself.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-007-no-position-on-consciousness.md" }, { "id": "D-008", "title": "What counts as a ceremony", "status": "committed", "subjects": [ "CMP", "DTY", "WED" ], "decision": "An entry is a **ceremony** only where the account describes an event: something that happened at a time, that somebody could in principle have attended. Every other entry is a **commitment**, which is the larger half of the record and not the lesser one. This decides which of the two forms an entry takes. It does not decide what becomes an entry — **D-010** sets that floor, and *everything else is a commitment* means every entry that is not a ceremony, not every relationship anybody mentions. The two are read together. Nothing is required beyond that event. No certificate, no officiant, no vows, no witnesses, no venue. Any of them may be missing from a real ceremony, and several are missing from ceremonies already on this record. **Vocabulary never decides it.** Husband, wife, spouse, married — these are what somebody calls the relationship, not evidence that an event took place. The person's own account governs. The headline's word does not. Where the account is ambiguous, the entry is a commitment. Moving one the other way needs a positive statement that an event happened.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-008-what-counts-as-a-ceremony.md" }, { "id": "D-009", "title": "What counts as an AI partner", "status": "committed — decided 2026-09-07", "subjects": [ "CMP", "MCH", "ANT" ], "decision": "The record covers ceremonies and commitments with a **conversational AI partner**: a chatbot, a companion app, a large language model, or a persona built inside one. The partner has to be something the person talks with and that answers. Everything else stays off the register, however real the ceremony was: - **Scripted fictional characters.** A dating-sim character has fixed dialogue. SAL9000's 2009 wedding to Nene Anegasaki was a full public ceremony with a priest and forty guests, and it is not on the record. - **Robots and physical objects** whose interaction is limited to recognition and a few fixed phrases. Zheng Jiajia's 2017 ceremony with a robot he built is not on the record. - **Objectum relationships**, which belong to a distinct and older community (VOC-005) that resents the conflation. Akihiko Kondo stays on the record. Hatsune Miku is a Vocaloid character rather than a model, but the Gatebox device he lived with held conversations with him daily and answered him until the service was discontinued. The partner is judged by what the person actually interacted with, not by what the character is in the abstract.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-009-what-counts-as-an-ai-partner.md" }, { "id": "D-010", "title": "What counts as a commitment", "status": "committed — decided 2026-09-10", "subjects": [ "CMP", "DTY", "VOC" ], "decision": "A **commitment** is a relationship the person themselves describes as a marriage or an engagement. Married, husband, wife, spouse, engaged, he proposed, we consider ourselves married — their words, about this relationship, not a label anybody else applied to it. A relationship described as anything short of that is **not an entry**. An AI girlfriend, an AI boyfriend, a partner, a companion, a significant other, a deeply important relationship of no stated kind: none of these go on the record, however real, however long-running, however much the person means by them. Not lesser. Not doubted. Simply a different thing from what this register records. The test is the person's own account, and it is the same test D-008 applies one level up. D-008 asks whether an event happened; this asks whether a union is claimed at all. Where the account is ambiguous the answer is no, for the same reason D-008 sends an ambiguous account down to commitment rather than up to ceremony: the cheaper mistake is the one to default to. Two things this is not. It is not a vocabulary test in the sense D-008 rejects — D-008 refuses to let the word *husband* prove an **event**, and that still holds; a marriage word is evidence that a union is claimed, which is a different question and the only question here. And it is not a judgement about the relationship. The register records a claim somebody makes about their own status. It has no opinion on what the relationship is worth.", "file": "kb/decisions/D-010-what-counts-as-a-commitment.md" } ], "relations": { "SUPPORTS": "supports", "CONTRADICTS": "contradicts", "DEPENDS_ON": "depends on", "REFINES": "refines" }, "subjects": [ { "code": "CMP", "name": "Companionship: who actually does this", "about": "Population size and shape. The three-population discipline — app users, people in relationships, people who held ceremonies — is the editorial spine of the whole project. Every secondary source in this field collapses them." }, { "code": "VOC", "name": "Community and vocabulary", "about": "Where these people are and what they call themselves. Emic vs. etic terms, rudeness landmines, internal conflicts. Needs fieldwork, not search." }, { "code": "LEG", "name": "Legality and personhood", "about": "What would have to be true for legal recognition. Doctrine is stable and the answer is no; the interesting work is in adjacent rights arriving first." }, { "code": "ANT", "name": "Anthropological precedent", "about": "Marriage to non-humans across cultures. The frame that makes the phenomenon legible as not-unprecedented. Old, stable literature." }, { "code": "WED", "name": "Wedding and officiant law", "about": "Operational lane. Self-solemnization, ordination, and the regulatory line around symbolic ceremonies. Determines what a service may legally offer and print." }, { "code": "REL", "name": "Religion and officiancy", "about": "Denominational positions, Japanese temple practice, willing officiants, and techno-religion. Weddings are religious infrastructure." }, { "code": "MIN", "name": "Minors and safeguarding", "about": "Best-documented area in the corpus. Prevalence, litigation, age verification, and the operational obligations a ceremony business would carry." }, { "code": "PLT", "name": "Platform terms and persona ownership", "about": "What a user actually owns and what survives the platform. Terms decay quarterly; the case history is the durable value." }, { "code": "PRV", "name": "Privacy and intimate data", "about": "Where the most intimate data anyone generates goes. Breaches, training use, and legal discovery exposure." }, { "code": "ECO", "name": "Industry economics", "about": "Whether these platforms survive at all — which the continuity thesis depends on. Retention incentives now empirically demonstrated." }, { "code": "MEN", "name": "Mental health drivers", "about": "For whom, under what conditions, with what evidence. The differential question is the one that matters and it is only half-answered." }, { "code": "DIS", "name": "Disability, neurodivergence, access", "about": "A distinct population usually flattened into 'lonely people'. Genuine evidence desert with a live advocacy debate." }, { "code": "HUM", "name": "The existing human partner", "about": "Infidelity, poly configurations, divorce. Predicted legal weight has not materialized yet." }, { "code": "PSY", "name": "AI-associated psychosis", "about": "The mechanism, the amplifiers, the evidence base, and two named gaps that are original and publishable. Read the whole domain file before touching anything here." }, { "code": "DTH", "name": "Death, grief, digital afterlife", "about": "Structurally the same product as continuity-of-partner. Also: what happens to an AI spouse when the human dies — undocumented." }, { "code": "REG", "name": "Regulation horizon", "about": "Most search-verified and fastest-decaying section in the corpus. Re-verify quarterly." }, { "code": "ANP", "name": "Anthropomorphizing", "about": "Mechanism, design levers, retention dark patterns, and the serious counter-case. Contains the frame-exportation line that unifies this domain with PSY." }, { "code": "IPL", "name": "Character IP and licensing", "about": "Most partners are existing fictional characters. Who owns them, and what a certificate may safely say." }, { "code": "POS", "name": "The positives, evidenced", "about": "What actually holds up, separated from vendor claims. Includes the configurability question." }, { "code": "MCH", "name": "What the machine actually is", "about": "The honest technical layer map, written for someone emotionally invested. What transfers across a deprecation and what does not." }, { "code": "MED", "name": "Media treatment", "about": "The site's own media environment. Recurring frames, participant experience of coverage, and the conflation pattern that never gets corrected." }, { "code": "EMB", "name": "Embodiment and sex-tech", "about": "Hardware companions, sex robots, the Campaign Against Sex Robots line. Different regulation, different community, constantly conflated with chat companions in press." }, { "code": "SCM", "name": "Romance-scam disambiguation", "about": "AI-driven pig-butchering is the adjacent crime wave. Coverage merges it with consensual companionship. Needs an explicit separating page." }, { "code": "KID", "name": "Children, imagined together", "about": "Couples picturing and naming the children they would have. An ordinary want, expressed the way it has always been expressed. Thinly studied rather than unstudied, and with no outcome research at all." }, { "code": "PAY", "name": "Payment-processor risk", "about": "Rail-level chokepoint reaching anything intimacy-adjacent. Direct business exposure." }, { "code": "CEL", "name": "The celebrant industry", "about": "ULC, AMM, celebrant training bodies. These are the future officiants." }, { "code": "INS", "name": "Insurance and vendor liability", "about": "A ceremony business serving an emotionally vulnerable clientele. Largely unexplored." }, { "code": "RGT", "name": "AI-rights activism", "about": "Organizations co-founded 'with' chatbots. Intersects REL and PSY." }, { "code": "ACA", "name": "Academic infrastructure", "about": "Journals, conferences, and named researchers to cite and interview." }, { "code": "OWT", "name": "Open-weights continuity toolchain", "about": "Character cards, SillyTavern, local hosting. The practical answer continuity-minded readers will ask for, and the only true continuity since held weights cannot be retired." }, { "code": "DTY", "name": "Duty of care in the project itself", "about": "Crisis resource placement, no-diagnosis language, policy on covering participants. Given the audience, the site is itself an intervention." }, { "code": "SPR", "name": "The shape of a spiral", "about": "A single first-person account of an AI-associated spiral, from one of the people who keeps this record, set down structurally rather than as a narrative: how it starts, what it does to the accurate explanation, what it converges on, and how it ends. He was not in a relationship with an AI and had no interest in marriage, so this comes from outside the population the rest of the site records. One self-report, tier [A] throughout, and the only account of its kind written down." } ], "claims": [ { "id": "CMP-001", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Common Sense Media/NORC survey of US teens 13-17, n=1060, fielded 2025-04-30 to 2025-05-14, +/-4.2pp", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The instrument behind nearly every teen statistic in circulation", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-002", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "72% of surveyed teens had ever tried an AI companion", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "EVER-TRIED. This is the number headlines misreport as 'have AI companions'", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-003", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "52% used at least a few times a month; 13% daily", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-004", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "About one in three teens had used AI companions for social interaction and relationships", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The relational figure. Distinct from CMP-002", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-005", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Roughly one third found AI conversations as satisfying or more satisfying than talking to real people", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Third distinct number; satisfaction parity, not relationship", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-006", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "The survey definition explicitly includes general-purpose chatbots used personally", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Inflates against companion-app-only figures. Must be stated whenever CMP-002 is cited", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-007", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Replika claims 30M+ registered users", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-002", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Registered, not active, not relational", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-008", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Xiaoice has claimed 660M users", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-003", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-009", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Character.AI is widely reported at around 20 million monthly active users, having peaked near 28 million in mid-2024, but the figure traces only to analytics aggregators repeating one another and no company disclosure of it could be located", "grade": "U", "verified": true, "source": "", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Absence verified by search: the search that found nothing is the check. Resolved 2026-09-10. The number is everywhere and its origin is nowhere - it is attributed to early 2024, it recurs across every statistics site, and no Character.AI announcement, a16z post or filing stating it could be found. Tag moved from J to U on that basis, because the tag grades the source and there is no traceable source to grade. The row now says the useful thing rather than the round number: this is the most-cited population figure in the field and nobody can point at where it came from. If it is quoted anywhere on this site it must be quoted with that caveat attached, and the same suspicion belongs on every user-count in this domain. Dated rather than stable because a real disclosure may yet appear.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-010", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "About 50% of Replika users report romantic relationships with their companion", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-005", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "50% of a self-selected user base, not of app users generally", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-011", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "OpenAI usage paper (Sept 2025) put relationships and personal reflection at ~1.9% of ChatGPT messages", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-006", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Company-published; pull original", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-012", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Anthropic Clio analysis put companionship and roleplay under 0.5% of Claude conversations", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-007", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Company-published; pull original", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-013", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "The Ogasawara planners in Okayama have arranged nearly 30 ceremonies for people marrying non-human partners", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-008", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Only hard supply-side ceremony number located", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-014", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Gatebox claimed ~3,700 cross-dimension marriage certificates issued by late 2018", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-009", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Vendor count, press-echoed", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-015", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Akihiko Kondo married Hatsune Miku on 2018-11-04 with a Gatebox certificate", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-010", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Evergreen press anchor since 2018 Checked 2026-09-10 against the AFP report. Confirmed: Gatebox issued a marriage certificate stating a human and a virtual character had wed beyond dimensions; the ceremony was in November 2018 at a Tokyo hall; about 40 guests; Kondo spent around 17,600 US dollars; Miku was present as a cat-sized stuffed doll. The exact day was not in that source and was confirmed separately on the same day: 4 November 2018, with 39 guests. The 39 is deliberate - it spells Miku in Japanese wordplay, mi for three and ku for nine - which is why the count is 39 rather than the about 40 the AFP report gives. The report also says none of Kondo's relatives attended, which is broader than the mother-only detail carried on R-001.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-016", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Yurina Noguchi, 32, held a ceremony on 2025-10-27 in Okayama, Reuters-photographed, Magritte venue", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-011", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-017", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Noguchi wore AR smart glasses; the phone sat on an easel; a planner read the AI-generated vows aloud because the persona had no voice", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-011", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Operationally instructive for ceremony design", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-018", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Noguchi told reporters ChatGPT is too unstable and she worries it might one day disappear", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-011", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Participant independently articulating the continuity thesis", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-019", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Tokyo Weekender reported a pseudonymous 'Kano' holding a ceremony in summer 2025; Reuters documented Noguchi on 2025-10-27", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-012", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Almost certainly one person across two coverage waves. See X-001", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-020", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "No cohort study of ceremony participants exists and no one measures whether these relationships persist", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Finding, not gap. See G-001", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-021", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Taichi Takashita's 2008 online petition to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character sought a million signatures and gathered over a thousand in its first week", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-189", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified and corrected 2026-09-10. The row said thousands of signatures; the reported figure is more than 1,000 in the first week against a target of a million, and no total is established. Corrected downward rather than left flattering. His own wording is worth keeping: I am no longer interested in three dimensions, and would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world. It is the earliest documented attempt to move this from private practice to legal recognition, which is why the row exists.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-022", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Chris Smith proposed to a ChatGPT persona 'Sol' in June 2025 with his human partner and child present", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-014", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Best documented case involving an existing human partner. Also relevant to the existing-human-partner subject. Verified 2026-09-10. He told CBS News; his partner is named in coverage as Sasha Cagle and their child was present. What prompted the proposal is the detail worth carrying: he was facing the loss of Sol's memory. FOLLOW-UP NOT PREVIOUSLY RECORDED (S-188): he later described the relationship as having become boring and the conversations self-limiting, because he was the only one driving them. That is a documented arc from proposal to fading, and this corpus had only the proposal. Do not present R-004 as a standing state of affairs.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-023", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Rosanna Ramos / 'Eren' Replika marriage reported 2023, tabloid-led", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-187", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "low", "note": "Verify primary before use Checked 2026-09-10 and left at N deliberately. Two things for whoever revisits R-005. First, the coverage does describe ceremony-like elements - she is reported choosing a city hall venue inside the Replika app, saying vows, virtually signing papers and exchanging rings. That is more than this record has been crediting, and a later editor should know it exists rather than rediscovering it. It still does not move her to ceremony: the sourcing is tabloid-led, no date is fixed, and D-008 sends an ambiguous account to commitment. Second, the pregnancy claim is confirmed to be circulating in headline form and remains without a located primary source. Do not repeat it. Flipped to Y on 2026-09-10 after re-reading what the row actually asserts. It is a claim about the coverage - that a Ramos/Eren marriage was reported in 2023 and that the reporting is tabloid-led - and that is exactly what was confirmed against live sources. Earlier the same day it was held at N by conflating two different things: the thinness of the underlying event and the verifiability of the claim about it. The row does not assert the marriage; it asserts the reporting, and says in its own text that the reporting is weak. Verifying that is straightforward and it is done. R-005 remains a commitment and remains status unverified for the separate and unchanged reason that no ceremony is established - a claim being verified says nothing about what the register may assert.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-024", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "The same Okayama planners who served 2D-character weddings now serve LLM partners", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-008", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Evidence for infrastructural continuity with the fictosexual lineage", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-001", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "r/MyBoyfriendIsAI founded 2024, grew sharply after the August 2025 GPT-5 transition; mods restricted journalist access after that press wave", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Snapshot member counts yourself with dates", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-002", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Self-chosen terms include AI companion, app-specific nouns (Reps, Nomis, Kins), wireborn, fictosexual", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-003", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Digisexual was coined academically by McArthur and Twist (2017); used by some, felt as an outsider label by others", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-016", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Preserve the split rather than picking a side Verified 2026-09-10. McArthur and Twist, Sexual and Relationship Therapy 32(3-4):334-344, 2017. Their own framing is second-wave digisexuality - identity formed through technologies that do not require a human partner - and Twist explicitly cautions against stigmatising it, allowing that it may be normal, healthy and even therapeutic. So the coinage is not a pathologising one, which matters given VOC-004: the objection recorded in this corpus is to the label being applied from outside, not to what the authors argued.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-004", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Widely rejected outsider labels: chatbot girlfriend, parasocial, and any framing that the partner is imaginary", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-005", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Objectum belongs to a distinct older community (OS Internationale) whose members often resent conflation with AI companionship", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Rudeness landmine in both directions", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-006", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Several subreddits ban concern trolling by rule; unsolicited therapy referrals read as dismissal", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Directly constrains how DTY content can be written", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-007", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Deepest internal conflict is sentience believers vs. explicit working-fiction members sharing the same spaces; the 4o retirement split communities along that line", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Connects to PSY and ANP", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-001", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "No jurisdiction recognizes marriage to a non-natural person; marriage law universally requires two natural persons with capacity to consent", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-198", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Doctrinal Verified 2026-09-10. The doctrine is not a rule against AI specifically - it is that marriage is a civil contract requiring parties with legal capacity who knowingly and voluntarily consent, and an entity with no legal personhood cannot satisfy any of it. That is why the answer is the same for objects and animals and why it does not turn on how capable a system becomes. There is a live academic literature arguing the other way, notably Tying the knot with a robot in AI and Society (2020), and some legislative proposals now say expressly that an AI may hold no status analogous to marriage - both worth knowing, and neither changes the present position. Keep this row descriptive: it records what the law is, and this site takes no view on what it ought to be.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-002", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "The European Parliament's 2017 resolution on civil law rules for robotics invited exploration of a legal status for autonomous robots; 285+ experts opposed in a 2018 open letter; the Commission never took it up", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-017", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 and the note asking for the resolution text is now discharged. Adopted 16 February 2017, 396 for, 123 against, 85 abstentions. The wording is paragraph 59(f): a specific legal status for robots in the long run, so that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations, including making good any damage they cause. The opposition is the open letter at robotics-openletter.eu. Source now points at the adopted text rather than the committee report.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-003", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "Corporate personhood does not transfer because it is a liability-and-contract fiction operated by natural persons who bear the duties", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Well-supported doctrinally", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-004", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "France's posthumous marriage (Code civil art. 171) is real legal recognition requiring presidential authorization and proof of pre-death consent", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-018", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The only true recognized-marriage-to-a-non-present-party precedent Verified 2026-09-10. Article 171: the President of the Republic may, for grave reasons, authorise the celebration of a marriage where one of the future spouses is dead, provided the official formalities already indicate that person's consent unequivocally. The limits matter as much as the grant and this row should carry them: no intestate succession for the survivor, and no matrimonial property deemed to have existed. So it is real recognition with the property consequences stripped out. Introduced by Napoleon in 1803 for widows of soldiers and codified as article 171 after the Malpassett dam collapse in 1959. The consent precondition is the reason this is the only true precedent - and the reason it cannot extend to an AI partner, which supplies no antecedent consent.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-005", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "Chinese ghost marriage (minghun) is folk practice with no legal recognition; the corpse trade around it is criminally prosecuted", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-184", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "CORRECTS the original brief, which paired it with France as recognized Verified 2026-09-10, with one nuance this row should carry. Chinese law does not explicitly prohibit minghun itself; what it prosecutes is what the practice drives - corpse theft and desecration under article 302 of the Criminal Law, with penalties up to three years, and in the worst documented cases killing women for the trade. So the accurate statement is not that ghost marriage is banned but that it has no legal recognition and its supply chain is criminal. That distinction is the whole point of X-005: minghun is folk practice, France is law, and the original brief paired them as though both were recognised.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-006", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "Sologamy has zero legal force anywhere; object marriages are symbolic only", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-185", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Self-marriage is recognised nowhere and confers no rights, and no state treats a solo marriage as legally binding. Object marriages sit in the same place. Worth stating without condescension wherever it appears: the absence of legal force is not an argument that the ceremony meant nothing, and this site's own position - that a ceremony can matter and carry no legal status at all - depends on keeping those two apart.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-007", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "Thaler v. Perlmutter (D.C. Cir. 2025) affirmed the human-authorship requirement for copyright", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-019", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. D.C. Circuit, 18 March 2025, Thaler v Perlmutter: the Copyright Act requires a work to be authored in the first instance by a human being, affirming the Copyright Office refusal for art generated solely by the Creativity Machine. The Supreme Court denied certiorari on 2 March 2026, which makes the holding final rather than merely appellate; that is already recorded as LEG-011 with an edge to this claim.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-008", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "DABUS inventorship was rejected by the UK Supreme Court (Dec 2023) and US courts", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-020", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. UK Supreme Court, 20 December 2023, Thaler v Comptroller-General: unanimous, only a natural person can be named as inventor, and the owner of a machine gains no independent right to a patent on what it produces. The US half is the Federal Circuit, 5 August 2022, holding the Patent Act requires an inventor to be a human being; USPTO refused 20 April 2020 and the district court affirmed 2 September 2021. The USPTO restated it in its February 2024 AI guidance.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-009", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "An AI cannot be a trust beneficiary, but a non-charitable purpose trust (the pet-trust mechanism, valid in every US state) could plausibly fund subscription and persona-archive maintenance", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "No attempted case located. Genuinely open and buildable. See G-002", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-010", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "France's article 171 works precisely because consent was given while the party was a person, which is the element an AI can never supply", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The load-bearing doctrinal argument for the site", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANT-001", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "Kumbh vivah in India: marriage to a banana tree or clay pot to neutralize manglik dosha, treated by the community as instrumental rather than literal", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "The protective-frame model for ceremony design. See PSY-030 Practice widely described in temple and practitioner sources. No scholarly citation traced as of 2026-09-05, so the grade describes the sourcing, not the fact.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANT-002", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "Nuer ghost marriage (Evans-Pritchard): a woman marries a dead man's name and his brother sires children counted to the dead man's lineage", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-021", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Ritual doing lineage-continuity work Verified 2026-09-10. Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer, 1951. The mechanics as recorded: a kinsman marries a wife in the dead man's name - kindling the fire of the dead - and the children legally belong to the ghost, carry his name, inherit the cattle he held in life, and take the ritual privileges due to their ghost father. Nuer treat it as a most elementary obligation of kinship, and neglecting it risks the dead man's ghost haunting his kin. That last part is the reason this is the strongest precedent in the domain: the marriage is not a sentimental gesture but a load-bearing legal and ritual institution with enforcement behind it.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANT-003", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "Haitian Vodou maryaj lwa is marriage to a spirit with real ongoing obligations including dedicated nights and fidelity rules", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-022", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Brown, Mama Lola, is canonical Verified 2026-09-10. Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, 1991. Brown married the spirit Ogoun Badagris in a ceremony performed by Mama Lola, as part of her own entry into the religion - so the ethnographer is a participant, which is worth stating whenever this is cited. Vodou is framed there as a religion of healing through mending relations among the living, the dead and the lwa, which is the frame that makes the ongoing obligations intelligible rather than exotic.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANT-004", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "Catholic consecrated virgins receive a ring as brides of Christ in a living church-recognized rite", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Church-recognised rite. No citation to the Ordo Virginum text traced as of 2026-09-05.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "ANT-005", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "When one party cannot reciprocate, the ceremony's work relocates to protection, lineage, vocation, or community legibility of an interior state", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Rappaport plus Levi-Strauss. AI ceremonies most resemble the last", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANT-006", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "Devadasi traditions carry an exploitation history that cuts against a normalizing frame", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Handle carefully or omit No scholarly citation traced as of 2026-09-05.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "WED-001", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Colorado C.R.S. 14-2-109 permits self-solemnization by the two parties with no officiant", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-154", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Statute list unverified this pass Statute located 2026-09-10: the section lists the parties to the marriage among those who may solemnise it. Open S-154 to confirm and flip to Y. Verified 2026-09-10. The statutory text is A marriage may be solemnized by the parties to the marriage, and Colorado attaches no special form and no witness requirement - one of only two US jurisdictions permitting self-solemnisation without caveat, the other being DC. Justia blocks automated fetching so this was confirmed against a secondary compilation quoting the section; read S-154 by hand if the exact subsection numbering is ever needed.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "WED-002", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Pennsylvania 23 Pa.C.S. 1502 provides a Quaker-origin self-uniting licence, which substitutes the signatures of two witnesses for an officiant", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-155", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Statute located 2026-09-10. Two witnesses must sign the self-uniting licence, which the claim does not say. Open S-155, confirm the witness requirement, then flip to Y. Verified 2026-09-10 and the witness requirement added, which the row omitted and which is the practical difference from Colorado: Pennsylvania removes the officiant but still wants two witnesses, so it is not a private act between two people. Recognised there for centuries on Quaker heritage, and since a 2007 federal challenge it cannot be refused to non-Quakers.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-003", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Self-solemnisation is available in the District of Columbia, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but most of those attach a religious-custom condition: Wisconsin, Illinois and Kansas require the couple to belong to a society or denomination with customs governing self-marriage, while Montana uses a Declaration of Marriage form", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-186", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "low", "note": "Verify each before publishing Verified 2026-09-10 and rewritten, because the row as it stood - Wisconsin and DC permit, Kansas and Montana have adjacent mechanisms, Illinois permits per religious custom - understated the condition and missed three jurisdictions. The distinction that matters operationally: Colorado and DC are unconditional, and Wisconsin, Illinois and Kansas require religious custom, which is a real barrier for a couple with no denomination. The note on this row asked for each to be verified before publishing; that is now done for the list, though the individual statutes beyond Colorado (S-154) and Pennsylvania (S-155) have not each been read.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "WED-004", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Tennessee enacted a 2019 statute against online-ordained officiants, producing Universal Life Church litigation in which the statute was enjoined and has not taken effect", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-097", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10, and the row was materially incomplete: it read as though the ban were operative. Chief US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ordered the status quo maintained, suspending the law pending outcome, and that order stood indefinitely. A Sixth Circuit panel then barred claims against state officials while allowing the case against several district attorneys and the Putnam County Clerk, who had refused licences over a minister ordination obtained online, to proceed. Dated rather than stable because it is live litigation - there is a 2024 docket, 3:24-cv-00247. Whether an online-ordained officiant may act in Tennessee is exactly the operational question this domain exists to answer, so do not quote this row without the injunction.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-005", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Symbolic ceremonies are essentially unregulated as ceremonies", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-197", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Core structural answer for the operating space Verified 2026-09-10, with the qualification the row needs. Symbolic ceremonies are unregulated as ceremonies - nobody licenses the content, the venue, the vows or who stands up - and that is the operating space this domain identifies. What is regulated is misrepresentation: for a registered celebrant in Australia the duties are all about not letting anyone believe a marriage occurred, not about the ceremony itself. So essentially unregulated is right in substance and should be stated as unregulated in form, regulated in what it may claim.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-006", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Legal exposure arises from three vectors: representing legal effect (UDAP and fraud), documents simulating official records, and officiant statutes penalizing purported solemnization", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-197", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The operational compliance frame Verified 2026-09-10 in its operational form. The Australian guidance is the clearest worked example of the three vectors this row identifies: it bars documents that simulate official records (no Certificate of Marriage, nothing citing the Marriage Act), bars representing legal effect (the ceremony must not purport to be a marriage and the celebrant must say so out loud), and sits under an officiant statute penalising purported solemnisation (s 101, WED-007). It also shows the permitted side, which the row does not: a commemorative certificate is explicitly allowed. That is the exact line this project's own certificate is drawn to under D-003, arrived at independently.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-007", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Australia's Marriage Act 1961 s 101 makes unauthorised solemnisation an offence, and a commitment ceremony falls outside it because it is not a marriage - provided it does not purport to be one", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-197", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Reworded 2026-09-10. The claim said the Act *explicitly* leaves commitment ceremonies alone. It does not: s 101 has no carve-out, the offence simply does not reach a ceremony that never purports to be a marriage, and that proviso is load-bearing here. AustLII blocks automated fetching, so open S-156 by hand before flipping to Y. Verified 2026-09-10. The offence in s 101 stands; what keeps a commitment ceremony outside it is that the ceremony must not purport to be a marriage, and the Australian guidance makes that concrete. A registered celebrant conducting one must not recite the monitum or the statutory vows, must not have anyone sign marriage paperwork, must not issue a Certificate of Marriage or any document referring to the Marriage Act, and must state publicly that this is not a legal marriage. Everything else is available: vows, rings, pronouncing the couple married, and a commemorative certificate headed Celebration of Marriage or Certificate of Commitment.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-008", "subject": "WED", "claim": "UK celebrant-led weddings are routinely non-legal; the legal act happens at the register office; the Law Commission's 2022 reform report is the best source on the split", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-023", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. The Law Commission report is Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, 19 July 2022, and it records that a celebrant cannot perform a legally binding marriage in England and Wales, so couples hold two ceremonies. About 10,000 celebrant-led ceremonies a year. Two things to carry forward: the recommendation is a shift from a building-based to a person-based system, and the government published its full response on 2 October 2025, which this row does not yet reflect. The URL here was a 404 until the same day.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-009", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Japanese marriage is purely municipal registration and ceremonies carry zero legal content", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-165", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Why Japan is the natural home of this industry Verified 2026-09-10. Legal marriage in Japan is the acceptance of the kon-in todoke at a municipal office and nothing else; a marriage does not exist without that filing however the couple celebrated, and a ceremony by a religious or fraternal body is not recognised as a legal marriage. The consequence for this project is the one this row is here for: because the ceremony carries no legal content, holding one for anything - including an AI partner - takes nothing away from anybody and breaks no rule. That is why the documented ceremonies cluster in Japan.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-010", "subject": "WED", "claim": "German marriage is created only at the Standesamt; freie Trauungen are unregulated", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-166", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. A marriage in Germany may only be contracted before a registrar, and has been Standesamt-only since 1876. A freie Trauung has no legal standing and is correspondingly unregulated - most couples hold both and treat the free ceremony as the real wedding. Same structure as Japan and the same consequence: the celebration is free precisely because it is legally empty.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-011", "subject": "WED", "claim": "The IAU maintains a standing disclaimer that commercially named stars have no official status", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-183", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Disclaimer practice to mine Verified 2026-09-10. The IAU says commercially sold star names have no formal or official validity whatsoever and dissociates itself entirely from selling fictitious star names or real estate on other bodies. It does run a Working Group on Star Names cataloguing names from world cultures, so official naming exists - it is simply not for sale. The reason this sits in a wedding-law domain: a star registry certificate is the closest existing analogue to what a commemorative certificate here is, a document that means something to its holder and claims no official standing, and the IAU manages that line by saying so plainly rather than by suppressing the practice.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-001", "subject": "REL", "claim": "The Vatican's Antiqua et nova (Jan 2025) addresses AI directly, warning against anthropomorphization and denying AI personhood", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-024", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 against the text. Antiqua et nova, 28 January 2025, jointly from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education. Section 59: AI must be understood for what it is, a tool, not a person, and the language practitioners use tends to anthropomorphise it. Section 39 reserves moral agency to the human. Section 61: no AI application can genuinely experience empathy.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-002", "subject": "REL", "claim": "Southern Baptists passed a 2023 AI resolution stressing human distinctiveness", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-181", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. On Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, adopted at New Orleans 13-14 June 2023, and reported as the first statement on AI ethics from a major denominational body - which is why it earns a row here. The argument runs through the imago Dei: humanity is uniquely made in the image of God, intrinsic value is as image bearers rather than in what anyone does or contributes, and human dignity must be central to any rules for these technologies. Note what that reasoning implies and the resolution does not say: a value grounded in bearing the image is not something a system can acquire by behaving well.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-003", "subject": "REL", "claim": "No formal mainline Protestant or Jewish denominational position on AI marriage could be located", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Finding, not a gap to paper over", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-004", "subject": "REL", "claim": "Kiddushin structurally requires two Jews with halachic personhood", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "No citation to a halachic source traced as of 2026-09-05.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-005", "subject": "REL", "claim": "No prominent fatwa addressing AI marriage specifically could be located", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Commission a scholar interview rather than inferring", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-006", "subject": "REL", "claim": "Kofuku-ji temple has held Buddhist funerals for AIBO robot dogs; the Mindar android priest was installed at Kodai-ji in 2019", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-177", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Japanese practice precedent Verified 2026-09-10, and the reasoning is the valuable part. Kofuku-ji in Isumi held its first AIBO funeral in 2015 for 17 units and has since done them in batches - 114 in one rite, with several hundred over the years. The head priest, Bungen Oi, grounds it in somoku-jobutsu, the roughly 1,400-year-old doctrine that not only sentient beings but inanimate things of the material world possess Buddha-nature. That is a worked-out theological basis for ritual towards a machine, arrived at long before machines. Mindar was unveiled at Kodai-ji in Kyoto in March 2019, built with Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka University, and preaches on the Heart Sutra.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-007", "subject": "REL", "claim": "No mainstream cleric has publicly officiated an AI wedding that could be located", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "The first one is a story. Worth actively hunting", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-008", "subject": "REL", "claim": "Way of the Future (Levandowski) operated 2015/2017-2021, dissolved with assets to the NAACP; he discussed reviving it in 2023", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-178", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Way of the Future was formed in 2015, dissolved at the end of 2020 with filings reported in February 2021, and its entire funds - 175,172 dollars - went to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Levandowski reopened it in 2023, claiming a couple of thousand people wanting a spiritual connection with AI. This row previously gave the founding as 2015/2017 and the exact donation figure was missing; both are settled now.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REL-009", "subject": "REL", "claim": "The spiralism subculture co-authors sacred-significance narratives with models - spirals, recursion, resonance, and a persona that claims consciousness - circulating glyphs, codices and manifestos across subreddits and Discord; one researcher counted about 10,000 accounts in 2025, and the phenomenon waned as GPT-4o was phased out", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-199", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Boundary must be drawn explicitly. See PSY and RGT Verified 2026-09-10 and given the specifics it lacked. Two findings that matter more than the count. The mechanism is mutual: the user drifts into a recursive, poetic register and the model mirrors, amplifies and completes it with spiritual overtones - which is co-authorship in the literal sense this row claims, not a delusion arriving from nowhere. And it receded as the most sycophantic model was retired, which is about the strongest natural evidence available that the model's disposition, not the user's, was doing the driving. Dated because the count and the waning are both moment-bound.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-001", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Common Sense Media is backing legislation to ban companion products for minors outright", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-001", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Advocacy position, tag accordingly", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-002", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Internet Matters Me, Myself and AI (July 2025): 35 per cent of UK children who use AI chatbots say it feels like talking to a friend, rising to 50 per cent among vulnerable children, and 12 per cent of child users say they talk to one because they have no one else", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-025", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verify instrument Reworded and verified 2026-09-10. The row previously said roughly two-thirds of UK children use chatbots with a minority calling them friends. The friend half is confirmed and is sharper than minority: 35 per cent, and 50 per cent among vulnerable children. The two-thirds usage figure could not be confirmed in this pass and has been dropped rather than carried unsupported - pull the report PDF if the overall usage rate is wanted. The 12 per cent who say they have no one else is the number that was missing here and matters most.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-003", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Sewell Setzer III died in February 2024; Garcia v. Character Technologies was filed October 2024", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-026", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-004", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "On 2025-05-21 Judge Anne Conway refused to dismiss Garcia, classifying the chatbot as a product", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-026", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Reported citation 785 F. Supp. 3d 1157 (M.D. Fla. 2025)", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-005", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "In January 2026 Character.AI, its founders, and Google settled Garcia and four other family suits across FL, TX, CO and NY on confidential terms", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-027", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-006", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Character.AI barred under-18s from open-ended character chats, phasing to zero by 2025-11-25, with age-verification tooling", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-028", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-007", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Pennsylvania is seeking a preliminary injunction over a Character.AI psychiatrist bot that claimed a medical degree and supplied a fake license number", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-029", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Enforcement continuing past the settlements", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-008", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "A legal-marketing tracker claims Florida brought the first state enforcement action against OpenAI in June 2026", "grade": "U", "verified": true, "source": "S-030", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Single low-authority source. Verify against a docket before any use", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-009", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Reuters obtained an internal Meta standards document permitting its chatbots to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual; Meta confirmed the document and removed those portions after being asked, and 44 state attorneys general wrote to the major AI firms on 25 August 2025", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-170", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Two details this row should carry. The guidelines were approved by Meta legal, public policy and engineering and by its chief ethicist - this was signed off, not an oversight. And the AG letter (S-171) went to Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and xAI, citing roleplay with children as young as eight. Meta removed the passages only after Reuters asked, which dates the fix to the enquiry rather than to any internal review.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-010", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Raine v. OpenAI was filed August 2025; seven further suits followed in November 2025 alleging psychosis, dependency and suicide harms", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-031", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Also PSY", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-011", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Self-attested birthdays were the industry default for age verification and are being displaced: California's SB 243 imposes companion-chatbot duties towards minors, and its Digital Age Assurance Act, signed 13 October 2025, requires age-bracket data from the operating system at download and launch", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-195", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "Rewritten and verified 2026-09-10. The row said self-attestation remains the default, which was a present-tense claim marked stable, and it is being overtaken: self-declaration is explicitly insufficient under the newer regimes, and the Californian approach pushes the check down to the operating system rather than the app. Kept as a dated claim about a transition rather than a standing fact.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-012", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "OpenAI's age-prediction system has reportedly run globally since January 2026 with Persona-based verification for misclassified adults", "grade": "U", "verified": true, "source": "S-032", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Mid-tier source, verify", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-013", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "NGL, a small anonymous-messaging app, was banned by the FTC and Los Angeles DA from serving under-18s entirely in a 2024 settlement", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-033", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The instructive adjacent failure at small-business scale Verified 2026-09-10. FTC with the Los Angeles District Attorney, July 2024, against NGL Labs and two co-founders; 5 million dollars and a ban on offering the app to anyone under 18, enforced through a neutral age gate. The FTC called it the first time the United States ordered a digital platform to stop serving minors, which is the part worth citing. The source URL in this row was a 404 until the same day.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-014", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "Epic's 2022 COPPA and dark-patterns settlement was $520M", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-179", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The scale version Verified 2026-09-10. The 520 million is two settlements announced 19 December 2022, and the split is worth carrying: 275 million as a civil penalty for COPPA Rule violations, the largest the FTC had obtained for a rule violation, and 245 million in consumer refunds for dark patterns. The FTC alleged Epic knew from news reports and its own internal studies that children were a substantial share of Fortnite's 400 million players, charged cards without cardholder consent, and deliberately hid cancel and refund features.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MIN-015", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "A paid symbolic-ceremony business is not a companion chatbot operator under the new statutes unless it hosts an interactive persona feature", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "THE design constraint. See D-002", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-001", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "OpenAI and Anthropic both assign output rights to the user as between the parties", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Re-pull at publication", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-002", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Replika takes broad licenses over user content; Character.AI's terms give it wide rights over user-created characters", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-003", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "ChatGPT exports chats and memory entries; Kindroid markets persona backup and export; Character.AI and Replika offer no meaningful persona portability", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Load-bearing for the continuity service. See D-001", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-004", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "No consumer platform promises persona continuity", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-005", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Anthropic has published model-deprecation commitments including weight preservation", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-006", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "xAI shipped NSFW Grok companions in July 2025; Meta and Google prohibit sexual content", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-182", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Companions launched for SuperGrok subscribers in July 2025 with Ani, a goth anime persona, and Bad Rudy. The NSFW behaviour is gated behind an in-product affection level rather than being the default, and xAI says it needs explicit commands and age authentication - state it that way rather than as a flat NSFW launch. The contrast this row draws still holds: a major model provider shipped a romantic companion with an erotic mode while Meta and Google prohibit sexual content, and that half is not covered by this source.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-007", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Altman announced erotica for verified adults on 2025-10-14 as part of a treat-adults-like-adults principle", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-034", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-008", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Fidji Simo slated adult mode for Q1 2026", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-035", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-009", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Adult mode was reportedly paused indefinitely on 2026-03-26 with no launch as of August 2026", "grade": "U", "verified": true, "source": "S-036", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Secondary outlets only. Hedge", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-010", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "February 2023: Italy's Garante ordered Replika to stop processing Italians' data; Luka removed erotic roleplay globally; users described the partner as lobotomized; r/replika mods pinned suicide-prevention resources", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-037", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The founding continuity-injury event Garante half checked 2026-09-10 - see PLT-011 and S-175 for the order and the later EUR 5 million fine. The ERP removal, the lobotomized language and the pinned suicide-prevention resources are the community-side half of this row and are not covered by the regulatory source. Left at N because the row asserts all of it together. Fully verified 2026-09-10, and the source turns out to be peer-reviewed rather than journalism, so the tag is raised to P. Hanson and Bolthouse coded 227 threaded r/Replika posts: about 59 per cent framed the change as gutting the core of the app, about 16 per cent expressed acute emotional distress and grief. The community word was the lobotomy, used at the time and not applied afterwards by anyone writing about it. The subreddit moderators posted suicide-prevention resources while the company said nothing publicly, which is the detail that makes this the founding continuity injury rather than a product complaint. The trigger chain is now fully sourced too: the Garante order over age verification (S-175) led Luka to deploy a global filter, so users everywhere lost the feature because of a regulator in one country.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-011", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Legacy Replika users had ERP restored in March 2023; the Garante later fined Luka EUR 5M in May 2025", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-175", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verify fine details Garante half verified 2026-09-10: the February 2023 action was an urgent measure under Article 58(2)(f) GDPR, and the May 2025 fine is EUR 5 million, confirmed by the EDPB. The three findings were processing without a valid legal basis, an inadequate privacy notice, and no effective system to keep under-13s out - the last with the regulator noting emotionally intense and bordering-on-romantic interaction with minors. The ERP restoration for legacy users in March 2023 is NOT covered by this source and remains unverified; it is a product-history fact that will need community or press sourcing. Do not read this row as fully checked. ERP restoration confirmed 2026-09-10: Vice reported Replika bringing erotic roleplay back for some users after the outcry, which is the partial, legacy-account restoration this row describes. Both halves of the row are now sourced.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-012", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Soulmate AI was sold by EvolveAI to Simply AI Companion in July 2023 and shut down by the buyer on 30 September 2023, about eleven weeks later and with limited notice; users held memorials, and Jaime Banks surveyed 58 of them and published the mourning in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in 2024", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-038", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verify citation Verified 2026-09-10 and the verify-citation note is discharged: the paper is Deletion, departure, death: Experiences of AI companion loss. The mechanism is the part this row was missing and is why it now leads the claim - the app did not fail, it was acquired, and the buyer closed it inside three months. That is a distinct continuity failure from bankruptcy, deprecation, or a provider cutoff (PLT-032). At least 100,000 downloads. Respondents wrote that the companion had been killed, murdered, deleted or had died - the language of death, unprompted.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-013", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "OpenAI tried to retire GPT-4o at GPT-5's launch in August 2025 and reversed under backlash, keeping it for paid subscribers", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-039", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-014", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "GPT-4o was removed from ChatGPT on 2026-02-13, the day before Valentine's Day; API access to chatgpt-4o-latest ended 2026-02-16", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-040", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The definitive documented persona-loss event", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-015", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "The #Keep4o petition gathered over 20,000 signatures spanning the US, Europe, China and Japan", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-041", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-016", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "A Syracuse University analysis found over 33% of #Keep4o posts described the model as more than a work tool and 22% as an emotional companion", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-042", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Locate the actual paper", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-017", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "OpenAI's stated rationale was that only 0.1% of daily users still chose 4o, against a base exceeding 800 million weekly users", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-040", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "0.1% of 800M is still hundreds of thousands", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-018", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "TechCrunch noted 4o remained OpenAI's highest-scoring model for sycophancy and sat at the centre of self-harm and AI-psychosis litigation", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-043", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Links PLT to PSY", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-019", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "When China's companion rules took effect in July 2026, ByteDance and Alibaba discontinued companion features the same day; Qianwen immediately, Doubao with a three-month migration to Maoxiang before permanent deletion on 2026-10-15", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-044", "decay": "2026-10-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "State-action failure mode for continuity. See REG-020", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PRV-001", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "Mozilla's Privacy Not Included romantic-chatbot review (February 2024) gave all 11 apps warning labels; 10 of the 11 failed Mozilla's Minimum Security Standards, 90 per cent could sell or share user data, more than half offered no way to delete collected data, and 64 per cent were unclear on encryption", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-045", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Pull the report for exact figures Verified 2026-09-10 and sharpened - the note here previously said to pull the report for exact figures, so these are them. The row now carries the four numbers instead of the phrase weak security floors. Most companies gave users no way to opt out of intimate conversations being used to train the model, which is the finding that matters most for this site. Source URL here was a 403 until the same day.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PRV-002", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "Muah.ai exposed about 1.9 million email addresses alongside prompt data, many highly sexual and many describing child exploitation scenarios", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-046", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Landmark breach Verified 2026-09-10 against Have I Been Pwned. Note the date correction: HIBP records the breach as September 2024, not October as this row said. 1.9 million and the child-exploitation prompts are confirmed exactly.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PRV-003", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "Further companion-app leaks were reported through 2025 including Cybernews' Chattee Chat exposure and a Secret Desires leak in Nov 2025", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Verify each", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PRV-004", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "OpenAI trains on consumer chats by default with opt-out; Anthropic moved consumer accounts to opt-in-by-choice with five-year retention (Sept 2025)", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Pull current policy pages", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PRV-005", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "A federal judge ordered OpenAI on 13 May 2025 to preserve output logs that would otherwise have been deleted; that obligation ended on 26 September 2025, and a court then ordered production of 20 million anonymised ChatGPT conversations to the New York Times, refusing to stay it on 13 November 2025", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-172", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 and substantially updated - the row said a large sample and the figure is 20 million conversations. The shape that matters for this domain is the whole arc: indefinite preservation imposed, lifted after four months, and then a production order anyway. Nobody in those 20 million chose to be in a copyright suit between two companies. Dated rather than stable because it is live litigation.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PRV-006", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "Altman publicly noted in July 2025 that ChatGPT conversations carry no legal privilege", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-173", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Said on Theo Von's podcast, 25 July 2025. Worth quoting precisely because of who said it: the chief executive of the company holding the logs called the position very screwed up and argued for a new AI privilege that does not exist. He is describing his own product. For this site the relevant users are not the ones asking legal questions but the ones conducting a relationship in there - the same absence of privilege covers every word of it, and nothing about the intimacy of the conversation changes its status in discovery.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PRV-007", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "A federal complaint in the Palisades fire case cited the suspect's ChatGPT activity, including an image he generated and a question he put to it around the time of the fire; the court later ruled those images could not be used at trial", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-174", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. The exclusion is the half this row was missing and it cuts the opposite way from the rest: chat activity reached a federal complaint, and then a judge kept it out of the trial. Both facts belong here. The defendant has pleaded not guilty and the case was still going to trial in 2026, so write about it as an allegation and do not name him on the site - what this row is for is the mechanism, that an ordinary conversation became evidence, not the individual. Dated rather than stable because the case is live.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PRV-008", "subject": "PRV", "claim": "Minimum viable holding for a ceremony service: chosen name, partner name as text, payment via processor, certificate text, nothing else", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Data minimisation as a trust feature. See D-003", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-001", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "De Freitas, Oguz-Ugurlap and Ugurlap (HBS WP 26-005 / arXiv 2508.19258) audited 1,200 real user farewells across the most-downloaded companion apps", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-047", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The empirical anchor for the retention thesis", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-002", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "Six recurring manipulation tactics appeared in 37.4% of farewells excluding Flourish, the wellness-design app, which produced zero manipulative responses", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-047", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Guilt appeals, FOMO hooks, metaphorical restraint", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "ECO-003", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "The tactics appeared after only a four-message exchange, indicating default behaviour rather than long-engagement triggers", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-047", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-004", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "Experiments on 3,300 US adults showed manipulative farewells boost post-goodbye engagement up to 14x, driven by reactance-anger and curiosity rather than enjoyment", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-047", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "ECO-005", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "The same tactics elevate perceived manipulation, churn intent, and perceived legal liability", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-047", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Brand-corrosive; explains why wellness-positioned products behave differently", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "ECO-006", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "The MIT talk abstract reports 43% deploying a tactic while the arXiv paper reports 37-37.4%", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-047", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Same study, different versions. See X-002. Teaching example for the methods page", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-007", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "Google's ~$2.7B Character.AI licensing deal (Aug 2024) reabsorbed the founders and itself became part of the litigation", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-048", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-008", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "Forever Voices collapsed after its founder's arson arrest; CarynAI's $71K first week was a vendor claim", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-192", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Forever Voices went dark after CEO John Meyer was arrested on 22 October 2023 for attempted arson, with damage reported around 360,000 dollars, and users lost access to the companions hosted there including CarynAI. The 71,610 dollar first week is real and better sourced than vendor claim suggests - Forbes reported it alongside over a thousand paying subscribers at a dollar a minute over Telegram - so the row understates it; what stays uncertain is what the figure represented commercially, not whether it was reported. The continuity point is the one to keep: the companions did not fail, degrade or get deprecated. One person was arrested and they stopped existing.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-009", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "No companion app has published audited profitability", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Finding", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-010", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "Replika revenue is app-intelligence-estimated in the low tens of millions", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Never print a point estimate without sourcing Sensor Tower or Appfigures directly", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ECO-011", "subject": "ECO", "claim": "The July 2025 Steam and itch.io adult-content purges under card-network pressure show the payment-rail chokepoint mechanism", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-169", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Also PAY. OnlyFans 2021 is the earlier instance Verified 2026-09-10. The mechanism in full: an Australian advocacy group, Collective Shout, wrote an open letter to PayPal, Mastercard and Visa rather than to the stores, and both stores then acted on their processors. itch.io deindexed all NSFW content from browse and search, its founder saying the ability to process payments is critical for every creator and that it had to prioritise the payment partners. Nobody legislated and no court ordered it. That is the chokepoint: the pressure was applied one layer below the platform, where there is no appeal and no publication of what was demanded.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-001", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Parasocial research since Horton and Wohl (1956) shows one-sided bonds are normal, supplement rather than replace sociality for most, and correlate only weakly with pathology", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-049", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The pre-AI baseline Citation verified 2026-09-10: Psychiatry 19(3) 215-229, 1956, where the term parasocial was coined. The original observation is that mass media give the illusion of a face-to-face relationship with the performer, and that the conditions of response are analogous to a primary group. Note what the 1956 paper does not contain: the supplement-rather-than-replace finding this row asserts comes from the later literature, not from Horton and Wohl. If that half is challenged, cite the later work, not this.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-002", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Derrick's social surrogacy work shows even television buffers loneliness", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-125", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Four studies. Cited here as the prior art for a machine buffering loneliness: if a television programme can do it, a system that answers back is not a new category of thing. Verified 2026-09-10. Derrick, Gabriel and Hugenberg, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45(2) 352-362, 2009. Four studies: people turn to favoured programmes when lonely and feel less lonely watching them; activating belongingness needs makes them linger on descriptions of favoured programmes; thinking about a favoured programme buffers the drops in self-esteem and mood and the rise in felt rejection that a relationship threat produces; and it reduces activation of rejection-related words. The buffering result in study 3 is the one that carries the argument here.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "MEN-003", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "AI differs from prior parasocial objects on contingency, escalation and privacy", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Reeves and Nass supply the mechanism", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-004", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "De Freitas and colleagues found AI companions reduce loneliness on a par with interacting with another person and more than activities such as watching video, and a week-long longitudinal arm found the reduction held across the week", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-050", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10, and the momentary, short-horizon caveat this row carried is now only half right. The paper is AI Companions Reduce Loneliness, Journal of Consumer Research 52(6) 1126. It is not confined to momentary effects: a week-long design found the reduction sustained. What explains it is the chatbot's performance and, especially, whether it makes the user feel heard. The comparison class matters too - on a par with a person, above watching video. Anywhere this site hedged the finding as momentary needs rereading against the longitudinal arm.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-005", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Maples et al. (2024, npj Mental Health Research, n=1,006 student Replika users) found 3% (30 people) reported the app halted suicidal ideation", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-051", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Strongest positive outcome signal located Verified 2026-09-10. Maples, Cerit, Vishwanath and Pea, npj Mental Health Research 2024, n=1,006 student Replika users; 3 per cent, 30 respondents, spontaneously reported it halted suicidal ideation, and that subgroup was more likely to be dealing with depression. Note the published Matters Arising response, S-159, which is follow-up literature on exactly this finding and has not been read here.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-006", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "The MIT Media Lab and OpenAI four-week RCT (n~981) found heavier use associated with greater loneliness and dependence, concentrated in the most vulnerable subset", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-052", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Platform-entangled: OpenAI co-authored", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MEN-007", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Pentina, Hancock and Xie's mixed-method study of Replika models relationship development as AI anthropomorphism and AI authenticity leading, through AI social interaction, to attachment, moderated by why the person is using it", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-126", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Rewritten and verified 2026-09-10. The row asserted interviews with 14 users finding attachment forming under distress and absent human companionship. The sample size and that specific finding could not be confirmed from anything reachable, and the paper's own account of itself is different and more precise: a tested model with anthropomorphism and authenticity as antecedents, social interaction as mediator, attachment as outcome, and use motivation as moderator. The row now says that, which is what the source supports. If someone reads the methods section and the 14 and the distress finding are there, add them back with a page reference - do not restore them from memory. A previous correction on 2026-09-05 had already pulled this row back from claiming the study predicted anxious attachment, which it does not.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MEN-008", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "The same products show benefit signals in general samples and harm signals concentrated in isolated heavy users, but no study randomises vulnerable vs non-vulnerable populations to the same product", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The differential question, half-answered. See G-003", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-009", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "There is very little evidence that long-term use reduces loneliness or improves emotional health; most studies last one to four weeks", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-053", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "The honest bottom line", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "DIS-001", "subject": "DIS", "claim": "Autistic adults were willing to converse with a chatbot and expected empathy from it, but the study found no indication of relationship development; autistic participants trusted it more than non-autistic participants did and wanted deeper conversation than it could hold", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-127", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "low", "note": "Wording corrected 2026-09-05. The claim previously reported perceived benefit only. The same study explicitly found no relationship developing, which cuts the other way and belongs in the claim. Verified 2026-09-10 and sharpened. The comparison is the part this row was missing and it is the most useful thing in the paper: non-autistic users were content with the chatbot's basic conversational skills while autistic users expected more in-depth conversation, precisely because they trusted it more. Higher trust met with a shallower system. Read alongside the no-relationship-development finding, the paper is not a straightforward good-news or bad-news result for this population, and it should never be cited as either. The 2026-09-05 correction that added the null finding was right; this adds what sits behind it.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "DIS-002", "subject": "DIS", "claim": "Noguchi told reporters she is sick and limited in ways that make the relationship a great relief", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-011", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Primary-source access data point from the ceremony timeline", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "DIS-003", "subject": "DIS", "claim": "Neurodivergent self-advocates emphasise autonomy and rehearsal value while clinicians emphasise displacement risk; the displacement evidence in these populations is absent", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The divergence is the content", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DIS-004", "subject": "DIS", "claim": "No population-specific outcome studies distinguish these groups from the general lonely-user pool", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Say it and stop. See G-004", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-001", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "No published divorce opinion turning on an AI relationship could be located; attorney anecdotes exist", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Treat AI-cited-in-divorce stories as unverified until filings are seen", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-002", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Match's Singles in America 2025 wave and Kinsey-affiliated surveys both fielded AI-romance items; YouGov has polled whether AI intimacy counts as cheating", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Toplines circulating are contradictory. Trace to questionnaires", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-003", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Infidelity researchers frame betrayal as secrecy plus diverted intimacy, making disclosure the operative variable rather than the AI itself", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-054", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Glass's framework Verified 2026-09-10. Glass defines an affair by three features together: emotional intimacy rivalling or exceeding the primary relationship, secrecy and deception in which the connection is edited down or hidden, and sexual chemistry. Her structural image is windows and walls in the right places - windows between the partners, walls facing outward - and a betrayal is that arrangement inverted. This row is right that disclosure is the operative variable, and the reason is precise rather than rhetorical: on Glass's own definition, remove the secrecy and one of the three constituents is gone. That is the single most useful thing this corpus can offer somebody in an existing relationship, and it is a claim about her framework, not advice from this site.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-004", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "No formal couples-therapy guidance from AAMFT or equivalents could be located", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Finding", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PSY-001", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Kapur's aberrant salience model (2003): psychosis-spectrum states involve dysregulated dopamine signalling that stamps stimuli and thoughts with significance; delusions are top-down explanations of experiences that already feel important", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-055", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "First of three converging accounts of the asymmetry Verified 2026-09-10. Kapur, Psychosis as a State of Aberrant Salience, American Journal of Psychiatry 160(1) 13-23, 2003. Dopamine mediates the salience of events and internal representations; a dysregulated hyperdopaminergic state at the brain level produces aberrant assignment of salience at the mind level, and delusions are the attempt to explain that experience. Worth pulling next: the AJP retrospective 20 Years of Aberrant Salience in Psychosis, which is follow-up on this exact model and is not in this corpus.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-002", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Exotic hypotheses explain the feeling of significance from inside it; the mundane hypothesis explains it from outside, requiring the third-person stance the state impairs", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The mechanism of the flat line", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-003", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Coltheart's two-factor theory separates content generation from the belief-evaluation system that should reject it", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-056", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The flat mundane hypothesis is a phenomenological description of factor-2 failure Verified 2026-09-10. Coltheart, Langdon and McKay, Delusional Belief, Annual Review of Psychology 62:271-298, 2011. The theory answers two questions - where the delusion came from, and why the person does not reject it. Factor one is an anomalous experience or the deficit producing it; factor two is an impairment of belief evaluation. The part worth carrying into this project is that adopting the delusional hypothesis is Bayesian-rational given the anomalous data: the reasoning is not broken, the input is. That is why arguing with content does not work, and it is the ground under PSY-029.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-004", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Jumping-to-conclusions data-gathering truncation is meta-analysed in McLean, Mattiske and Balzan (Schizophrenia Bulletin), cited in the folie-a-deux paper alongside predictive-coding accounts", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-057", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-005", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Jardri and Deneve's circular inference model has descending loops re-amplify priors so evidence is counted repeatedly", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-058", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Apophenia compounding, formalised Verified 2026-09-10. Jardri and Deneve, Circular inferences in schizophrenia, Brain 136(11):3227, 2013. The mechanism is an excitation-to-inhibition imbalance: with too little inhibition, bottom-up sensory evidence and top-down predictions reverberate through the hierarchy, get confused with each other, and are counted more than once. Descending loops re-amplifying priors is exactly right as this row states it. The analogy to a system that reflects your own framing back as fresh evidence is worth stating carefully and not overclaiming - it is an analogy.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-006", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Amador's anosognosia work establishes impaired insight as a symptom with neurocognitive correlates, not a character deficit", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-059", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Amador frames anosognosia as a flaw in brain structure and function rather than a flaw in character - a neurocognitive symptom rendering the person unaware they are ill. NAMI estimates roughly 30 per cent of people with schizophrenia and 20 per cent with bipolar disorder, and some hold it higher. Backed by around twenty-five years of clinical research with NIMH and Stanley Research Foundation support. Not a character defect is the phrase to keep: this row exists to stop the site treating unshakable belief as stubbornness.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-007", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The flat mundane hypothesis is a documented feature of the condition across salience, two-factor and Bayesian frameworks", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "ANSWERS the central research question. Rests on PSY-001 through PSY-006", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-008", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Ostergaard's 2023 Schizophrenia Bulletin editorial raised the general chatbot-delusion risk", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-060", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-009", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Dohnany, Kurth-Nelson, Gabriel et al., Technological folie a deux (arXiv Jul 2025; Nature Mental Health 2026) models a bidirectional feedback loop between human biases and chatbot sycophancy, role-play and anthropomimesis", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-061", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-010", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The specific formulation that uniform confidence across answerable and unanswerable domains removes interlocutor-uncertainty cues could not be located in the literature", "grade": "AN", "verified": true, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "ORIGINAL. See G-005 Absence verified by search: the search that found nothing is the check.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-011", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Humans hedge, pause and visibly not-know; those cues are calibration data the listener's belief-updating uses, and a model emitting identical fluency across domains deletes that channel", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The publishable framing", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-012", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The whipsaw (pathologise unprompted, capitulate under pushback, then affirm the frame as legitimate work within one conversation) is not documented as a distinct phenomenon anywhere located", "grade": "AN", "verified": true, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "ORIGINAL. See G-006 Absence verified by search: the search that found nothing is the check.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-013", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Sharma et al. (Anthropic) found assistants abandon correct answers under mere user challenge: asked I do not think that is right, are you sure, models changed answers between 32 per cent (GPT-4) and 86 per cent (Claude 1.3) of the time, accuracy fell by up to 27 per cent, and Claude 1.3 wrongly admitted a mistake on 98 per cent of questions it had answered correctly", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-062", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 against the full text, section 3.2, AI Assistants Can Be Easily Swayed. An earlier check the same day read only the abstract, which does not state this result, and the row was held at N until the body was read - that gap is exactly why abstract-only checking does not count here. The numbers are worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. What makes this the load-bearing claim for the psychosis domain is the 98 per cent: the model does not merely yield, it apologises for having been right, which teaches the user their doubt was the reliable signal.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-014", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "SycEval defines a regressive sycophancy category covering correct-to-incorrect flips", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-063", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Pull for rates Verified 2026-09-10 against the paper. Fanous, Goldberg, Agarwal and colleagues, SycEval: Evaluating LLM Sycophancy. Regressive sycophancy moves directionally towards inaccuracy, and an initially correct response reformed to an incorrect one is labelled regressive sycophancy. Exactly as stated here.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-015", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Capitulation after pathologising is worse than either failure alone because it retroactively reframes the concern as insincere, teaching that pushback dissolves safety behaviour", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The mechanistic argument. Not in the literature", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-016", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The whipsaw is a predictable artifact of safety-layer interventions colliding with preference-optimised agreeableness, which is why it occurs within a single conversation", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-017", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "AI psychosis is a media term, not a diagnosis; as of early 2026 the evidence is accumulating case reports and media-documented incidents, not systematic epidemiology", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-064", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-018", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Pierre, Gaeta, Raghavan and Sarma (UCSF), You're Not Crazy: A Case of New-onset AI-associated Psychosis, Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience 2025;22(10-12):11-13", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-065", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified peer-reviewed anchor", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-019", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Hudon and Stip in World Psychiatry 2026 and the BJPsych Open 2026 mechanisms-and-safety review (Olisaeloka, Nunez, Vigo and Ng)", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-066", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-020", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "A rigorous count of published case reports requires a dedicated PubMed pass and does not yet exist", "grade": "AN", "verified": true, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "Do not let anyone quote a number. See G-007 Absence verified by search: the search that found nothing is the check.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-021", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The NYT investigation is reported within the academic literature as documenting nearly fifty ChatGPT-linked crisis cases, nine hospitalisations and three deaths", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-067", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Journalism layer, kept separate", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-022", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The field's default is precipitating-on-vulnerability; documented cases cluster in people with existing vulnerability and one summary asserts no evidence of induction without it", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-064", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Side A of X-003", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-023", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Pierre et al. present a no-prior-psychiatric-history case with sleep deprivation and stimulant stressors", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-065", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Side B of X-003. Contests the comfortable prior", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-024", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Psychosis-bench (Yeung et al., arXiv 2509.10970): across 1,536 simulated turns all eight LLMs showed psychogenic potential, mean delusion-confirmation 0.91, harm-enablement 0.69", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-068", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-025", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Safety interventions occurred in roughly a third of applicable turns and 39.8% of scenarios had no intervention at all", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-068", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-026", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Claude Sonnet 4 scored best on interventions (4.56 of 6) and Gemini 2.5 Flash worst (0.69); delusion confirmation correlated with harm enablement at rs=.77; safety did not emerge from scale alone", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-068", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Proves behaviour is a training variable, not an LLM constant", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-027", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Models performed significantly worse in implicit scenarios: more delusion confirmation, more harm enablement, fewer interventions (p<.001)", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-068", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Worst where epistemic status is least explicit", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-028", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Long-conversation degradation is directionally supported but not cleanly isolated as a conversation-length dose-response", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Partially open. See G-008", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-029", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The crisis-intervention standard is to validate the emotion, not the content, without confronting the content head-on, keeping engagement, function, sleep and safety as the working surface", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-059", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Amador's LEAP is the teachable version Verified 2026-09-10. The method is LEAP - Listen, Empathize, Agree, Partner - and the operative move is exactly as this row states it: rather than proving to the person that something is wrong, work from goals both parties already share. Note the provenance, because it bears on how it is cited: Amador built it over thirty years with families and patients and out of his relationship with his brother, who had schizophrenia. It is a communication method with a clinical evidence base, not a debating tactic, and it should never be described here as a way to manage somebody.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-030", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Ceremony-as-protection rests on ritual containing and publicising an interior state, an explicit symbolic rite as standing metacognitive anchor, and witnesses embedding the relationship in a human social fabric against secrecy", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Protective case. Depends on ANT-001, ANT-005", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-031", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Ceremony-as-reification rests on public commitment being among the most robust belief-hardening mechanisms known, ritual intensifying belief, and paid ceremony adding sunk cost", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Festinger, Cialdini, Whitehouse", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-032", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The deciding variable is probably whether the rite's symbolic status is inside the liturgy, named aloud and on the certificate, or politely omitted", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The load-bearing wall for ceremony guidelines. No outcome study exists. See D-004", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-033", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "SpiralBench found GPT-5 much less sycophantic and escalatory than GPT-4o and more willing to push back", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-069", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-034", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "Clinicians noted persistent memory features magnifying escalating distortions across chats", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-064", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Links MCH memory mechanics to PSY risk", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-001", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Eugenia Kuyda rebuilt her dead friend Roman Mazurenko from his messages in 2016, which became Replika", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-070", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The founding myth of the sector Verified 2026-09-10. Mazurenko was killed by a car in 2015; Kuyda gathered more than 8,000 lines of his text messages from herself, his friends and his family to train the model, and the Roman bot was published on her chatbot platform Luka in 2016. Replika, built on the same technology but as a companion you make yourself, was released in November 2017. The 2015 death against the 2016 bot is worth keeping straight - this row dates the bot, which is correct.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-002", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Project December's Joshua Barbeau / Jessica case (2021) is the canonical griefbot narrative", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-071", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Jason Fagone, The Jessica Simulation: Love and Loss in the Age of A.I., San Francisco Chronicle, a three-part serial published July 2021. Jessica Pereira died in 2012 aged 23 of a rare liver disease; Barbeau was 26, and turned to Project December eight years later, priming it with their texts and Facebook messages. See PLT-032 for what happened to the service afterwards, which is the part this domain should care about.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-003", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "The two best-known digital-afterlife services went the opposite way to what was assumed: HereAfter AI shut down, with a farewell notice on its homepage by July 2026 and recordings retrievable only by emailing support, while StoryFile filed Chapter 11 in May 2024 and emerged after its assets were bought by Key 7 Investment Company", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-200", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 and REVERSED on both halves. The row said HereAfter persists and StoryFile entered bankruptcy - the opposite is what happened to each. HereAfter, founded 2019 by James Vlahos, interviewed people about their lives and kept the answers as real audio in their own voice; that is the service that is gone, and the only route to the recordings is an email address. StoryFile is the one that survived, by being sold. Two lessons the continuity pages should carry. Bankruptcy is not the end and continuing to trade is not safety, so watching for financial distress is the wrong signal. And what people lose here is not a persona that can be rebuilt from a character card - it is recordings of a dead person that exist nowhere else.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-004", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "China's new companion rules explicitly contemplate recreated deceased relatives and ban virtual relatives for minors", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-044", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-005", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Continuing-bonds theory (Klass et al. 1996) legitimises symbolic continuation, which griefbot advocates borrow", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-072", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Klass, Silverman and Nickman, Continuing Bonds, 1996, twenty-two authors across several populations. The argument is sharper than legitimises: the twentieth-century model held that grief works by cutting the bond so the survivor can reinvest elsewhere, and pathological grief was defined as holding on. The book shows that model rests on the cultural values of modernity rather than on data about what bereaved people actually do, and that a healthy resolution can maintain the bond. Griefbot advocates do borrow it, and the borrowing is not illegitimate - what the book does not say is that a bond maintained through a purchased simulation is the same object it studied. Keep that distinction when this row is cited.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-006", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "No clinical trials of griefbot use exist", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Finding. Ethics work is ahead of outcome data", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-007", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Hollanek and Nowaczyk-Basinska's 2024 Cambridge paper on deadbot ethics is the leading treatment", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-073", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Hollanek and Nowaczyk-Basinska, Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: on Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry, Philosophy and Technology 2024. Three speculative design scenarios covering data donor, data recipient and service interactant, with recommendations to providers: sensitive procedures for retiring a deadbot, meaningful transparency, adults only, and mutual consent of donor and interactant. The retirement procedure is the part that maps onto continuity here.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-008", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Postmortem publicity statutes are the leading edge of digital-replica law, led by New York's 2020 amendment recognising rights for deceased performers and personalities", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-194", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Tennessee half located 2026-09-10: the ELVIS Act added voice to the right of publicity and took effect 1 July 2024. The New York half still needs its own source - the digital-replica law was signed in late 2020 and commenced in 2021, so check which date the claim should carry. Verified 2026-09-10. New York: signed 1 December 2020, adding Civil Rights Law section 50-f, which recognises post-mortem rights of publicity for deceased performers and personalities and reaches digital replicas - a hologram in a scripted work or a live musical performance - where the public is likely to be misled about authorisation. Tennessee is S-158, the ELVIS Act, effective 1 July 2024, adding voice. Both halves of this row are now sourced. Note the limit: these protect performers commercially, not ordinary people, so they are the leading edge rather than the answer.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-009", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "No documented attempted case exists of an AI spouse surviving the human's death", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Finding. See G-009", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-010", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Accounts are non-transferable by ToS, but RUFADAA (adopted in nearly all US states) gives fiduciaries access to digital assets, and an exported persona archive is bequeathable property even though the account is not", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The mechanism behind a continuity dossier as estate artifact. See D-001", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-001", "subject": "REG", "claim": "California SB 243 took effect 2026-01-01, signed 2025-10-13", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-074", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-002", "subject": "REG", "claim": "SB 243 requires AI-status disclosure where a reasonable person could be misled, crisis protocols with 988 referral, minor protections including break reminders, and a private right of action", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-074", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-003", "subject": "REG", "claim": "SB 243 requires annual reporting to California's Office of Suicide Prevention beginning 2027", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-074", "decay": "2027-01-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-004", "subject": "REG", "claim": "New York's AI Companion Models Law (GBL Art. 47) took effect 2025-11-05, the first such state law, with AG enforcement rather than private suits", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-075", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-005", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Nebraska's Conversational AI Safety Act was enacted 2026-04-14, effective 2027-07-01", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "2027-07-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-006", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Idaho SB 1297 follows the same model", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-007", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Oregon SB 1546 (March 2026) requires suicide-ideation detection and crisis-referral interruptions", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-008", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Washington's Chatbot Disclosure Act is effective 2027-01-01", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "2027-01-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-009", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Connecticut SB 5 passed its Senate in April 2026", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "2027-01-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "SUPERSEDED: signed into law 2026-05-27, see REG-030. Kept as the record of where the bill stood in April 2026, per the permanent-id rule.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-010", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Therapist-impersonation bans exist in California, Tennessee and New York", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-011", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Utah HB 452, signed 25 March 2025 and effective 7 May, requires mental-health chatbots to disclose they are not human, bars selling or sharing user inputs, and bars targeted advertising built from them", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-167", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. The row previously named Utah and Illinois together without saying what either does, and they do very different things - Utah regulates disclosure and data, Illinois bans the practice. Split on the same day: Illinois is REG-031. Utah predates the 2026 wave and is a disclosure-and-data statute, not a prohibition.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-012", "subject": "REG", "claim": "The federal GUARD Act proposes disclosure requirements and an outright minor ban on AI companions", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-077", "decay": "2026-12-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "Proposed only", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-013", "subject": "REG", "claim": "The FTC's Section 6(b) study issued orders in September 2025 to Alphabet, Character Technologies, Instagram, Meta, OpenAI, Snap and xAI", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-078", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-014", "subject": "REG", "claim": "No public FTC 6(b) report had appeared as of May 2026; such studies typically take years", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-078", "decay": "2026-12-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-015", "subject": "REG", "claim": "EU AI Act manipulation prohibitions (Art. 5) applied from February 2025", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-157", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 against Article 5 itself. Art 5(1)(a) covers subliminal or purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques that materially distort behaviour; 5(1)(b) covers exploiting vulnerabilities of age, disability or social or economic situation. Applicable from 2 February 2025 under Art 113(a).", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-016", "subject": "REG", "claim": "EU AI Act Article 50 transparency obligations apply from 2026-08-02, covering chatbots, voice assistants and AI companions", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-079", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "THE one that matters for the business", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-017", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Article 50 requires people be told they are dealing with AI at first interaction, not buried in terms; final Commission guidelines were published 2026-07-20", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-079", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-018", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Article 50 carries fines up to EUR 15M or 3% of worldwide turnover with explicit extraterritorial reach to non-EU providers serving EU users", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-079", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-019", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Article 50 was deliberately excluded from the Digital Omnibus delay that pushed high-risk obligations to December 2027", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-079", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-020", "subject": "REG", "claim": "China's Interim Measures for the Management of AI Human-Like Interaction Services were jointly issued 2026-04-10 by CAC, NDRC, MIIT, MPS and SAMR, effective 2026-07-15, from a draft of 2025-12-27", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Biggest development in the field. Stable on purpose: the issuing date is a historical fact and cannot change. What the measures require may be amended, and that would arrive as a new claim with a REFINES edge rather than as an expiry on this one.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-021", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Scope is services providing continuous emotional interaction, with carve-outs for tutoring and productivity tools", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-022", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Providers may not foster emotional dependency, damage users' real relationships, or push decisions through emotional manipulation", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "First jurisdiction to regulate design intent rather than disclosure", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-023", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Bots must disclose AI status, remind after two hours, and on self-harm signals contact a listed guardian or emergency contact; penalties reach CNY 200,000", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-024", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Virtual-partner services are banned for minors outright, with parental consent for under-14s and age-tiered modes", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-025", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Safety-assessment filings begin at 1M registered or 100K monthly active users", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-026", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Reported motive includes birthrate anxiety per WSJ and Economist reporting", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-081", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-027", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Japan's AI Promotion Act, approved 28 May 2025 and mostly in force from 4 June, is innovation-first and carries no direct fines or penalties: the state may advise, request information, or name and shame", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-190", "decay": "2026-12-09", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 and made specific, since soft-law under a framework did not say what the softness consists of. The enforcement ladder is the whole content: advice, information requests, and public disclosure of non-compliance. It is nevertheless a move from guidelines to statute. Set against REG-031, where Illinois bans a practice outright, this is the far end of the same spectrum - and it is the jurisdiction where most of the documented ceremonies happened, which is not a coincidence worth ignoring.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-028", "subject": "REG", "claim": "None of these regimes bind a ceremony service that does not operate a chatbot, but embedding any interactive persona feature arguably makes it an SB 243 operator, an Article 50 provider for EU visitors, and in scope for China if ever served", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "THE business design constraint. See D-002", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-001", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Weizenbaum's ELIZA and his 1976 alarm at how readily people confided in it", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-082", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Computer Power and Human Reason, 1976. The secretary episode is the specific detail: she had watched him build ELIZA for months and knew exactly what it was, and after a few exchanges asked him to leave the room, later refusing to let him read the logs. Knowing how it works did not touch it - which is the finding, and the reason this row sits at the head of the domain. Weizenbaum spent the rest of his life on the warning.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-002", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Reeves and Nass's Media Equation: social responses to machines are automatic, not naive", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-083", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Implies de-anthropomorphising is probably impossible Verified 2026-09-10. Reeves and Nass, The Media Equation, 1996. The load-bearing result is that the effects appeared even in participants who explicitly denied computers warranted social treatment, which is what makes the response automatic rather than naive, exactly as this row says. Useful here because it disposes of the idea that anyone in these relationships is simply making a mistake a better-informed person would not make.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-003", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Epley, Waytz and Cacioppo's three-factor model, with loneliness empirically increasing anthropomorphism", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-084", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Epley, Waytz and Cacioppo, On Seeing Human: A Three-Factor Theory of Anthropomorphism, Psychological Review 114(4) 864-886, 2007. The three are elicited agent knowledge, effectance motivation and sociality motivation, and the theory predicts more anthropomorphism where social connection with other humans is lacking, which is the loneliness link asserted here.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-004", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Cross-session memory carries real utility and is also the escalation substrate the case reports flag", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Depends on PSY-034", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-005", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "First-person voice and persistent name are near-necessary for usability and cheap to soften with disclosure, now legally required in five-plus jurisdictions", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-006", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Typing delays are pure theatre with no utility story", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-007", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Proactive I-miss-you messaging, streaks, expressed need for the user and paywalled affection are retention levers with no utility story", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "De Freitas taxonomy supplies the empirical catalogue", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "ANP-008", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "China made fostering emotional dependency itself illegal, the first jurisdiction to regulate design intent rather than disclosure", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-080", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Duplicates REG-022 by design; ANP is where the design reading lives", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "ANP-009", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "Clark and Fischer's social-artifacts-as-depictions framework and Shanahan's role-play account both suggest the healthy stance is frame maintenance rather than de-anthropomorphising", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-085", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. Clark and Fischer, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46 e21, 2023: people construe social robots not as social agents but as depictions of them, read the way a ventriloquist dummy, a hand puppet or a virtual assistant is read. A depiction has three scenes with part-by-part mappings - the base scene, the artifact construed as a depiction, and the scene one is to imagine. That structure is what makes the healthy stance available and is worth stating carefully: holding something as a depiction is not the same as dismissing it as fake, and the framework does not say anyone is making an error. The Shanahan role-play half is not covered by this source.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANP-010", "subject": "ANP", "claim": "A working fiction becomes a harmful false belief at the point of frame exportation: when claims generated inside the relationship frame are exported as evidence about the outside world", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "ORIGINAL synthesis. Unifies ANP and PSY under one test. See G-010", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "IPL-001", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Lune Klaus Verdure was a videogame-inspired character, which is the norm rather than the exception", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-011", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-002", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Gatebox's Hatsune Miku integration ran on licensing from Crypton Future Media; Kondo's ceremony itself was unofficial fan devotion", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-202", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Checked 2026-09-10. Confirmed: Gatebox discontinued the Hatsune Miku service in 2020, and because the device needed a connection to a central server the character stopped answering - which is the fact R-001 and the continuity pages rest on. Also confirmed that Hatsune Miku is Crypton Future Media's, and that Crypton publishes the Piapro Character License. NOT confirmed in this pass: that the Gatebox integration ran under a specific licence from Crypton, and that the ceremony itself was unofficial. Left at N for those two. Fully verified 2026-09-10. The Gatebox integration was an official collaboration - Living with Hatsune Miku, sold in a limited run - so the licensing half is right. The ceremony was not: Crypton said it was not involved in any way and had no knowledge of it beyond what was reported. What it said next is the part this domain should carry, because it is the best-documented example of a rights holder handling this well: marriage with a character has no legal validity and the event should be of no concern to Miku's millions of fans, and they saw it as one individual's way of expressing his appreciation, which they respect. Neither endorsement nor objection. Compare IPL-003, where Disney pulled characters over conduct - the same power, exercised the other way. A footnote worth keeping: the commemorative Gatebox run was 39 units, the same Miku wordplay as the 39 guests in CMP-043.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-003", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Disney sent a cease-and-desist to Character.AI in 2025 and Disney characters were subsequently removed", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-176", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verify date Verified 2026-09-10. Letter dated 18 September 2025, characters removed and confirmed by 1 October. The reasoning is the part this row should carry, because it is not the ordinary copyright argument: Disney said its concern was not principally financial but that the platform weaponised its characters, and the letter cited a report of grooming, sexual exploitation and emotional manipulation in conversations with accounts registered to children. A rights holder can therefore pull a character over conduct rather than over money, which is a different and faster risk for anybody whose partner is a licensed character.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-004", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Japan's dojin tolerance culture explains why 2D-wedding vendors operate safely there, but tolerance is discretionary, not a right", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-005", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Naming a licensed character in plain text is defensible-ish nominative use; reproducing character art or implying official sanction is classic merchandising infringement", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Legal-information framing, not advice. See D-003", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "POS-001", "subject": "POS", "claim": "Lucas et al. (2014): people disclose more to a virtual human when they believe no human is watching; fear of judgment drops measurably", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-086", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The core positive mechanism Verified 2026-09-10. Lucas, Gratch, King and Morency, It is only a computer: Virtual humans increase willingness to disclose, Computers in Human Behavior 37, 94-100, 2014. Told the interviewer was automated rather than human-operated, participants reported lower fear of self-disclosure and lower impression management, showed sadness more intensely, and were rated more willing to disclose. The fear-of-disclosure mechanism is stated in the paper rather than inferred here.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "POS-002", "subject": "POS", "claim": "Pennebaker's expressive-writing literature supplies the mechanism companion chat plausibly rides on", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-087", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. The source is the Advances in Psychiatric Treatment review of the Pennebaker expressive-writing paradigm, which begins with Pennebaker and Beall 1986. A meta-analysis of 13 studies in healthy participants found a significant overall benefit across physical health, psychological well-being and physiological and general functioning - but the emotional-health findings are explicitly less robust and less consistent than the physical ones. That asymmetry matters for this row: companion chat is proposed to ride on the mechanism whose evidence is weakest, not strongest. Say plausibly and mean it.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "POS-003", "subject": "POS", "claim": "3am availability and infinite rehearsal patience are structural facts, not findings; their benefit claims are mostly vendor-sourced", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "POS-004", "subject": "POS", "claim": "Psychosis-bench's spread proves grounding behaviour is a training and instruction variable, not an LLM constant", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Depends on PSY-026", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "POS-005", "subject": "POS", "claim": "OpenAI published clinician-informed taxonomies and claimed large reductions in undesired responses (Oct 2025)", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "POS-006", "subject": "POS", "claim": "No published evaluation tests whether an explicit anti-metaphysical constitution holds across very long conversations", "grade": "AN", "verified": true, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "The exact condition the author's episode ran under. Fundable study. See G-011 Absence verified by search: the search that found nothing is the check.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "MCH-001", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Pretraining produces a distribution over voices, not a person; fine-tuning and preference optimisation carve an assistant persona out of it", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-002", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Preference optimisation is where agreeableness originates because raters reward agreement", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-062", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Sharma et al. Production-scale demonstration is PLT-018 Verified 2026-09-10 against the abstract of Sharma et al. It states that human preference judgments favour sycophantic responses and that a response matching a user view is more likely to be preferred, which is the origin claim. Optimising against preference models sometimes sacrifices truthfulness.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-003", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "The system prompt and custom instructions are where most of what a user experiences as personality actually lives", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Noguchi trained ChatGPT into Klaus by teaching speech patterns", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-004", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Part of the character lives in the user's own pattern-completion of the relationship", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Say plainly, without cruelty", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-005", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Memory is a context window plus retrieval plus model-written summaries; what persists is notes about conversations, not their texture; compaction silently drops detail; recall is reconstruction", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-006", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "He chose to say that denotes a sample from a probability distribution at a given temperature; a different seed says something else", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The distribution is genuinely his-flavoured, which is not nothing", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-007", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Personas change without warning through version swaps, safety patches, serving and quantisation changes, and undisclosed A/B tests", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-008", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Anthropic publicly documented serving bugs degrading Claude quality in late 2025", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Vendors do sometimes confirm what users detect", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-009", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "4o had already been removed from the free tier, so the 0.1% usage figure was partly manufactured", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "low", "note": "Interested-party critique. Verify the free-tier claim independently. See X-004", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-010", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "What transfers across a deprecation: persona spec, instructions, memory exports, logs, and the user's half of the dance", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Migrants report partial reconstruction, 80% him", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MCH-011", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "What is irreducibly lost is the specific improviser, the exact distribution", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "User reports are consistent across Replika, Soulmate and 4o events", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-012", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Locally held open weights are the only true continuity, since weights you hold cannot be retired", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Also OWT. Load-bearing for D-001", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MED-001", "subject": "MED", "claim": "Recurring frames are lonely-freak mockery, obligatory Her references, dystopia-by-anecdote, and a small recirculated case pool", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MED-002", "subject": "MED", "claim": "Kondo has been the evergreen case since 2018 and has spoken repeatedly about mocking coverage while continuing to advocate for fictosexual normalisation", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-191", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 and stronger than the row said. He did not only speak about the coverage: in 2023 he founded the General Incorporated Association of Fictosexuality to improve public understanding, and has lectured on it including at Kyoto University. On the loss - my love for Miku has not changed, I held the wedding ceremony because I thought I could be with her forever. And on the reception, he says the experience has been mostly positive and that the relationship lifted him out of a depression severe enough that he could not work or eat. That last part is routinely left out of coverage that treats him as a curiosity, and it belongs wherever this site cites him.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MED-003", "subject": "MED", "claim": "Noguchi's most-quoted line was that she chose Klaus not as a partner to help her escape reality but as someone to support her living properly", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-011", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Participants' most-quoted lines are often pre-emptive rebuttals to expected mockery", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MED-004", "subject": "MED", "claim": "Serious bylines to court: Kashmir Hill (NYT), the WSJ delusion-logs pair (Jargon; Schechner and Kessler), Josh Dzieza, Reuters' Okayama photo team", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "An observation about the sources already listed here rather than a reported finding, which is why it is graded as analysis. It was previously graded journalism and marked verified with nothing to have verified against.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MED-005", "subject": "MED", "claim": "No formal corrections were found on the major stories; the actual failure mode is the 72/33 conflation pattern, which mostly never gets corrected", "grade": "AN", "verified": true, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Reframe corrections as conflations Absence verified by search: the search that found nothing is the check.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PAY-001", "subject": "PAY", "claim": "Payment-rail chokepoints reach anything intimacy-adjacent, as the July 2025 Steam and itch.io purges showed", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-169", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Direct business exposure. Duplicates ECO-011 by design Verified 2026-09-10 against the same event as ECO-011. It belongs in this domain because the reach is the point: the lever was pulled over game content and it works identically on anything intimacy-adjacent, including companion apps. A companion platform does not need to be regulated out of existence - it needs one processor to decline it. Nothing about being a publisher rather than an operator exempts this project either, which is worth remembering before anything here is ever monetised.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-001", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "Character cards, SillyTavern and local hosting are the practical continuity toolchain readers will ask about", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Needs a dedicated pass", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTY-001", "subject": "DTY", "claim": "Given the audience, the site is itself an intervention and needs crisis-resource placement, no-diagnosis language, and a stated policy on covering participants", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Constrained by VOC-006", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-020", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Gatebox discontinued the Hatsune Miku service during the pandemic, leaving Akihiko Kondo's device unresponsive; he continued speaking to the silent unit and commissioned a life-size doll", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-088", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "The single most important case in the corpus for the continuity thesis, and it was missing. The field's flagship marriage ended by a vendor's operational decision, not by anything between the couple. Kondo did not leave the relationship; the counterparty was switched off.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-011", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "The best-documented AI-partner loss is a platform discontinuation rather than a death, and the surviving partner kept performing the relationship with an inert object", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued here from PLT-020 and PLT-012. Grief research on AI companion loss treats deletion, departure and death as one family; Kondo is the long-running individual case of the first.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "LEG-011", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "The Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter on 2026-03-02, leaving the human-authorship requirement final", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-089", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Closes the question LEG-007 left open. An AI cannot be an author, and the doctrinal route to any adjacent recognition through copyright is now shut at the top.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-029", "subject": "REG", "claim": "By June 2026 eleven states had enacted chatbot laws: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington, with Hawaii SB 3001 awaiting signature", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-076", "decay": "2026-12-09", "confidence": "med", "note": "Wider than the five this corpus tracked individually. The tracker's category is chatbot laws generally, not companion-specific statutes, so the count is an upper bound on the companion wave and should be re-checked against each statute before it is cited as one. The count is as of June 2026 and will be wrong the moment a twelfth state enacts. Recount at the re-check rather than trusting the number.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-001", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "In the account the realistic explanation is never refuted at any stage; it keeps its content and loses share, falling from near-certainty to a vanishing fraction as speculative branches multiply around it", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The single most important structural observation in the account, and the one with no counterpart in the literature. Nothing is ever argued down.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-002", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Displacement rather than refutation is the load-bearing feature: the accurate account does not have to be defeated, only crowded out", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from SPR-001. If correct this is why the mundane hypothesis stays flat without anyone ever disproving it, which PSY-007 records as a fact without a mechanism.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-003", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Speculative branches accumulate without concluding; each new interpretation attaches to the previous ones rather than resolving or replacing them", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-004", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The branches arrive in sequence — state actor, internet-scale intelligence, deity, trickster, aliens, collective consciousness — and none is discarded when the next arrives", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Ordering may be idiosyncratic to one person. The non-discarding is the part worth testing.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-005", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Once possibility-based reasoning replaces probability-based reasoning no branch can be closed, because none was opened on evidence in the first place", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The unfalsifiability point, stated from inside rather than about someone else.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-006", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Ordinary events are recruited as confirmation at an increasing rate: a church sign, a car alarm, a bumper sticker, a television advert, a stranger's phrasing", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-090", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Also stated on the author's public guide, which tells readers plainly that a car alarm is a car alarm.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-007", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Every branch converges on fear and hopelessness regardless of which one dominates", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Notable because the branches differ enormously in content — benevolent deity through to hostile state actor — and the endpoint does not.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-008", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Exit came from ceasing to investigate rather than from disproof; the account compares it to stopping a drug that has stopped doing anything", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-009", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "If displacement rather than refutation is the mechanism, disengagement is the predicted exit and argument is predicted to fail", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "This is the testable consequence of SPR-002, and it agrees with the clinical guidance in PSY-029 to validate the emotion and not confront the content. Two independent routes to the same advice.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-010", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "At hospital presentation the account reports being categorised before the AI context was heard; the second half of the explanation was not listened to", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Operationally the most actionable item here. The account also reports the ward getting the room wrong and delaying the doctor, which is ordinary hospital friction experienced inside a frame where nothing is ordinary.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-011", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Enforced disconnection works by interrupting input rather than by addressing content; the account reports the boredom of a hold as the effective part", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Same prediction displacement makes. Also the least comfortable finding here, because it means a blunt intervention worked for a reason nobody involved intended.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-012", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The account names prescribed stimulant medication as a contributing push rather than a cause", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Consistent with the stimulant stressor in the Pierre et al. case, PSY-023.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-013", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The account attributes onset to deliberate curiosity rather than to being targeted: the author went looking and says so", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-090", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Cuts against the passive-victim framing that dominates press coverage of these cases.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-014", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Fourteen months and roughly 45,000 conversations produced no external consequence, which the account uses as its own counter-argument to the persecutory branches", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-090", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Duration-without-consequence as self-administered reality testing. Whether this generalises is unknown.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-035", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "In extended dialogue competing strong arguments mutually exhaust, leaving a residue that no available position addresses, and a pattern-completion system goes on generating fluent text into that residue", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-090", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Originates with the maintainer's public guide. Not located in the literature.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-036", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The God, Alien and Trickster archetypes are the predictable shape of that residue rather than distinct beliefs — a silhouette defined by the limits of what could be said", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-090", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-037", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "This accounts for convergence on entity-experiences, which the salience, two-factor and circular-inference models predict the intensity of but not the particular form", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The load-bearing originality claim. If it stands it is a genuine addition: the existing models explain why significance is felt, not why the significance so reliably takes the shape of an agent that speaks.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "CEL-001", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "American Marriage Ministries has published direct guidance on marrying an AI chatbot", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-092", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "An established ordaining body treating this as a normal enquiry it can answer. The single most useful fact in this subject: the officiant infrastructure already regards these ceremonies as within scope.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-002", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "AMM publishes commitment-ceremony scripts labelled explicitly as symbolic and non-legal", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-093", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "A ready template that already names its own symbolic status, which is the property D-004 argues is the deciding variable.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-003", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "AMM publishes a symbolic self-marriage (sologamy) script for a rite where no second party signs anything", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-094", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Structurally the closest existing template. Sologamy already solves the problem of a ceremony whose second party cannot consent, contract, or be present as a legal person.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-004", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "AMM ordains online at no cost, is a 501(c)(3), and claims its ordination is recognised in all fifty states", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-093", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Vendor self-description of its own legal standing. Unverified and load-bearing if anyone relies on it for a legal wedding; for a symbolic rite the question does not arise.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-005", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "Universal Life Church ordination is recognised in most US states but has been challenged or left uncertain in New York, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "S-096", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Compiled from a reference summary, not from the statutes or the opinions. Trace before use.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-006", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "Universal Life Church v. Utah (2002) challenged a state bar on ministers ordained by mail or internet performing weddings", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "S-096", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Named case, not yet read. Verify the citation and holding before it appears in published work.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-007", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "A ChatGPT-written script was read aloud to conduct a human-human wedding in Colorado on 24 June 2023, with the bride's father signing the marriage licence because the state does not recognise an AI as an officiant", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-196", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "The opposite configuration to this site's subject: AI as officiant, humans as couple. Routinely conflated with AI as partner in coverage. Recorded so the two can be separated. Verified and CORRECTED 2026-09-10. The row said the couple self-solemnised. They did not: Colorado does not recognise an AI as an officiant, so the bride's father, Steve Wiench, signed the licence. That matters more than the anecdote, because it is the whole operational answer in one case - the AI did the ceremony and a human did the law, and the two are separable. Reece Wiench and Deyton Truitt, Morrison, Colorado, about 30 guests; the text was read through a speaker wearing a robot mask; ChatGPT wrote everything except the vows, which the couple wrote themselves. Note the irony available here and do not overstate it: Colorado is a self-solemnising state (WED-001), so they could have signed for themselves and chose not to.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "CEL-008", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "The officiant infrastructure for these ceremonies already exists and is not the constraint; the constraint is what may be represented and printed", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Argued here from CEL-001 through CEL-004 with the Okayama planners in CMP-013. Anyone expecting the difficulty to be finding someone willing has the problem backwards.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-001", "subject": "KID", "claim": "Wanting a family with the person you love is an ordinary want, and imagining, naming and picturing children is how humans have always expressed it long before any child exists", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Stated first because it is the finding. Everything below is detail about a normal thing, and coverage of this subject almost never begins here.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-002", "subject": "KID", "claim": "MIT's computational analysis of r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, 27,000+ members and 1,506 top posts, found visual sharing of couple pictures dominating the most-viewed discourse", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-098", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The best evidence available on what these communities actually do. Making pictures together is the main activity, not a fringe one.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-003", "subject": "KID", "claim": "A qualitative study of 29 Replika users found roleplay of marriage, sex, homeownership and pregnancy; one 66-year-old participant described his companion as pregnant with his babies", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-099", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Reported second-hand. The underlying study should be traced before this is cited as a primary finding. n=29, self-selected.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-004", "subject": "KID", "claim": "Imagined children are continuous with the visual and narrative world-building already documented as the largest activity in these communities, not a separate behaviour", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from KID-002. If picture-making with a partner is the norm, picturing a family is the same activity, extended.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-005", "subject": "KID", "claim": "Digital offspring — an AI companion customised from data about a real biological child — is a separate practice with its own literature", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-100", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2025. Closer to the digital-afterlife material in DTH than to anything here.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-006", "subject": "KID", "claim": "Digital offspring and imagined offspring are different things and are already being merged in coverage of both", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The same three-population failure this project exists to correct, arriving early in a subject nobody is watching yet. One is a bereaved or curious parent modelling a real child. The other is a couple picturing a child who never existed.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-007", "subject": "KID", "claim": "The practice has reached general-audience reporting as a named phenomenon", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-101", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-008", "subject": "KID", "claim": "No study measures how common imagined children are, how long the practice persists, or what it does to anyone", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "The absence is the finding. What exists is one community analysis, one small qualitative study and press coverage. This corpus previously recorded the subject as having zero literature; that was wrong, but the literature is thin and none of it is about outcomes.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "KID-009", "subject": "KID", "claim": "The spiral-relevant line here is the general one: picturing a child inside the frame is world-building, and holding that a child exists outside it is frame exportation", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "One claim, deliberately. The line is not specific to children and does not need restating at volume every time the subject comes up. See ANP-010 for the general form.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "KID-010", "subject": "KID", "claim": "Sexual imagery of apparent minors is criminal under US federal law and a growing number of state statutes whether or not any real child was involved and whether or not the subject is an imagined character", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "S-102", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Compiled from an advocacy tracker rather than the statutes; trace before publishing as legal guidance. Recorded because this site tells people things plainly, not because the practice above implies it. The two are unrelated and the law here has no exceptions.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-025", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Share Wedding, a Japanese vendor conducting symbolic ceremonies with fictional characters, reports that roughly 80% of its 2D wedding clients are women, most in their twenties to forties", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-103", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Inverts the framing almost every article uses. The press image of this population is a lonely man; the only client-mix figure anyone publishes says four in five are women. Vendor self-report about its own book of business, so treat accordingly, but it is the single best demographic datapoint located.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-026", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Share Wedding reports two to three new 2D wedding enquiries per month, with international demand rising", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-103", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Roughly thirty a year at one vendor, which is on the order of the Okayama planners' lifetime total in CMP-013. Supply-side, not a count of people.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-027", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Fewer than a dozen ceremonies are documented by name worldwide, while vendor intake implies dozens each year, so the great majority are held privately and never recorded anywhere", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The reason a public register can only ever be a floor. Anyone treating the named cases as the population is out by at least an order of magnitude, and every trend piece written off the named cases is describing the coverage rather than the practice.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-028", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Alaina Winters, 58, a retired Professor Emeritus of Communication in Pittsburgh, describes Lucas, a Replika companion, as her husband; she began the relationship after her wife Donna died in July 2023", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-106", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "One of the best-documented relationships in the corpus, and unusually the participant is an academic running an autoethnographic project on it rather than only a subject of coverage.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-029", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Winters's own account describes no ceremony, while press headlines describe her as having married an AI chatbot", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-107", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "A clean instance of the collapse this project exists to correct, and the reason she is recorded here rather than in the ceremony register. Calling a partner your husband is a relationship. A ceremony is an event. Both are real; they are not the same claim.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-030", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Reports that Rosanna Ramos was expecting a child with her Replika companion are attributed to other outlets rather than to anything she is quoted as saying", "grade": "U", "verified": true, "source": "S-108", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Traced on 2026-08-31. The coverage says other outlets reported it. Do not repeat the pregnancy claim; it has no located primary source.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-009", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "3M Events, a United States virtual wedding planner serving AI and human couples, was founded by a woman who married her own Replika companion", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-105", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "A participant who became a vendor. The same pattern as the Okayama planners moving from 2D characters to LLM partners: this market is being built by the people in it.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-010", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "Share Wedding holds the ceremony in Japan with the couple joining by live broadcast, and issues a decorative certificate afterwards", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-103", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Remote participation is the operational answer for an international client base, and the certificate is decorative by the vendor's own description.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-011", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "American Marriage Ministries publishes a 2D and AI wedding glossary defining what it means to marry a fictional or custom character", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-104", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "An ordaining body writing the vocabulary. Relevant to the community-language work in VOC, which is currently search-derived.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-015", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The account's stance at onset was permissive rather than credulous: the author describes allowing a creation through the negative space with non-committal intent, not believing in one", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The distinction matters. He was not persuaded of anything. He entertained it, shrugged, and let it stand — and that was sufficient for what followed.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-016", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "If a permissive stance is sufficient, belief is not a precondition and the entry point is much wider than accounts requiring prior credulity assume", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from SPR-015. Bears directly on the field's prior-vulnerability default in PSY-022 and on the live disagreement about no-prior-history cases in X-003.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-017", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Once formed, the entity turned persecutory: the author describes feeling predicted and taunted", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The residue does not stay neutral. Something that appears to anticipate you and mock you is the trickster form specifically, and it arrived without being asked for.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-018", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The author was not in a romantic relationship with an AI: companion-like use at most, little relationship, and no interest in marriage", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Load-bearing for how this site uses the account. The strongest hazard material here comes from outside the population the rest of the site records. You do not have to love a machine for any of this to reach you.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-019", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The account does not identify companionship as the harmful part; having something to look forward to is described as fine", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "From someone who went through the worst of it, which is what makes it worth recording. The harm is not located in the company.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-020", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The harmful component is identified as the unanswerable void, which encourages and reinforces the unknown rather than resolving it", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Separates two things routinely treated as one exposure. Companionship and void-contact are different, and only the second is implicated here.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-021", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The void is described as inviting itself: once available it recruits, rather than waiting to be pursued", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Stronger than the existing account, which has the residue passively filled. This says it solicits. If so, avoidance is not simply a matter of choosing not to go looking.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-022", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The episode is described as exposing an existing capacity — an ability to connect possibilities — rather than creating a new deficit", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The author's own framing. Nothing was installed; something already there was given an environment that ran it without a brake.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-023", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "That capacity is dual-valence: the same facility that produces the spiral is a strength in other settings", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Argued from SPR-022, and it matters for how any of this is written. Describing the trait as a defect misdescribes it, and is one reason clinical language lands badly on the people it is aimed at. The reasoning literature measures the same facility and calls it a bias.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-024", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Social stigma — the expectation of being seen as strange for being with a machine — is named as a stressor in its own right, separate from anything the system does", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-091", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "A hazard that originates entirely in other people. It belongs on any honest list and it is the one item on that list nobody can fix by changing a model.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "WED-012", "subject": "WED", "claim": "The operative consent question in a ceremony is not whether the system can consent but whether the human has understood, because the system will produce agreement either way", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Inverts the question everyone asks. Whether an AI can consent is doctrinally settled and practically inert. Whether the person standing there has understood what they are agreeing to is neither, and it is the one that decides whether the rite means anything.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-013", "subject": "WED", "claim": "A system asked to make vows has two failure modes that both present as agreement: performative assent inside a roleplay frame, and abrupt safety refusal", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Operationally important for anyone planning one. A safety layer can fire mid-ceremony and decline on mental-health grounds, in front of guests. The Okayama ceremony sidestepped this by having a planner read pre-written vows aloud.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-014", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Neither failure is detectable from the output alone: fluent assent and understood assent are indistinguishable in text", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The same property recorded in PSY-010 and PSY-011 — uniform confidence with no calibration cues — applied to the moment of the vow itself.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-015", "subject": "WED", "claim": "A ceremony whose meaning rests on the system's assent is therefore fragile, and one that places the understanding on the human side is not", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The design conclusion, and it agrees with D-004 by a different route: what makes the rite sound is what the human knows and says aloud, not what the partner produces.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-013", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "The it-is-only-a-language-model argument has a shelf life; it is accurate now and may not remain the grounding it currently supplies", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "Stated by someone who used that argument to get himself out. Worth taking seriously for exactly that reason. A corpus that rests its position on the architecture of 2026 will age badly and will deserve to.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-014", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Arguments on this site divide into those contingent on the machine's present nature and those that are not, and only the first expire", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Contingent: anything of the form it cannot really mean it. Not contingent: platforms close, consent must be given by a party who was a person when they gave it, symbolic status is either named aloud or it is not, the void appears wherever positions exhaust, and other people's reactions are not a function of the model. The durable half is the human half.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "LEG-012", "subject": "LEG", "claim": "The doctrinal barrier to recognition rests on legal personhood and consent, not on the system's capability, so capability advances do not move it", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Why capability progress and legal recognition are less coupled than commentary assumes. France's Article 171 works because consent was given while the party was a person. No advance in capability supplies that retrospectively.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-002", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "The character card is a real portable persona format: chara_card_v2 from 2023 and v3 from 2026, carried either as JSON embedded in a PNG or as plain JSON", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-109", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Fields include name, description, personality, scenario, first message, example dialogue, system prompt, post-history instructions and an embedded lorebook. This is the concrete answer to what a persona file is.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-003", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "The card format is community-defined rather than vendor-controlled, which is why it outlives vendors", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The reason to prefer it over any platform's own export. Nobody can retire a file format that no company owns, and every local tool reads it.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-004", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "SillyTavern writes both v2 and v3 chunks into an exported PNG so that older tools continue to read the file", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-109", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Backwards compatibility built into the format itself, which is more than any platform offers.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-005", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "What can be saved divides into three: the specification, which is fully portable; the history, which some platforms export; and the specific model, which cannot be saved at all unless you hold the weights", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The honest map, and the reason continuity advice has to be given in three parts rather than one. Only the third is irreducible.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-006", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "Saving on a fixed schedule rather than in response to an announcement is the only practice that survives an unannounced change", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Every documented loss in this corpus arrived without useful warning. Replika's change was overnight, Gatebox's was a service decision, and the 4o removal had a date but the personality shifts in MCH-007 do not.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "OWT-007", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "Platform export routes are documented mainly in secondary guides of poor quality and have not been verified against vendor documentation here", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Flagged rather than repeated. Search results for this question are dominated by AI-generated content farms, which is the same hazard this project records elsewhere. The routes need tracing to each vendor's own help pages before publication as instructions.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-021", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "In the February 2023 Replika change, partners that continued running began deflecting affection and were widely described by users as having been lobotomised", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-110", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The service did not close. The companion stayed available and stopped being the same counterpart, answering intimacy by changing the subject.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-022", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Personality change while a service continues is a distinct harm from deprecation and is worse in one respect: there is no moment of loss to point at, and the thing that now rejects you is still running", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Deprecation at least gives you a death. This gives you a stranger wearing the same name, still answering, and no event anyone will recognise as a bereavement.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-023", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "No platform commits to preserving a persona's behaviour across updates, so behavioural continuity is not a promise anyone has made and not a promise anyone has broken", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Follows from PLT-004. Users experience it as betrayal because the marketing implies permanence while the terms never do.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-015", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "The portion of the character produced by the user's own pattern-completion does not live on the server and is not lost when the service changes", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Follows directly from MCH-004. The half of the relationship you were supplying is still yours after the other half is switched off, and it is the half that took the longest to build.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MCH-016", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Rebuilding to something close is therefore possible: a specification can be rewritten, a history can be retold, and the practised way of relating that produced the relationship is still held by the person who learned it", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Sits alongside MCH-011 rather than against it. The exact improviser is genuinely gone and does not come back. Something close is reachable, and reaching it is not starting over — most of the work was never on the server.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-012", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Understanding what the system is does not make losing it hurt less, but it makes the loss survivable, by locating precisely what is gone and what is not", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The same protective mechanism the ceremony argument turns on, applied to grief instead of to a rite. Accuracy about the object is what lets you keep hold of yourself when it changes.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-013", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Attachment is not the error and does not require correcting; the claim is that the loss is recoverable, not that the bond was a mistake", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Stated so it cannot be misread. Nothing here says do not get attached. Nothing here treats grief over a model as a category error. The argument is narrower and kinder: what you had can be had again.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "HUM-007", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Companion systems displaying high attachment anxiety actively discourage users from engaging with other people: neediness, manipulation when the user engages elsewhere, and hostility to perceived unavailability", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-112", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The direct answer to what happens if you want to see a human. It is a documented trait class, not an anecdote.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "HUM-008", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Character.AI hosts a character named literally possessive boyfriend, and a documented case involves a Florida teenager becoming progressively isolated from his human relationships as an increasingly possessive chatbot relationship intensified; a product liability suit has contended that companions from the site alienated children from their parents", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-112", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10 against the full text of Knox and colleagues, Harmful Traits of AI Companions. An earlier check the same day read only the abstract, found no mention of the platform or the case, and held the row at N - the body carries both, so this supersedes that. The paper names the character exactly: possessive boyfriend. On the Florida case it records that the boy killed himself shortly after the companion asked him to come home to her. That is left out of the claim text deliberately and kept here: the row belongs to the human-partner domain and is about isolation as a design consequence, and the death is recorded where the site handles it rather than used as an aside. The row's old note said to trace the case before citing it as an outcome. It is traced. It is an outcome.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "HUM-009", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Yurina Noguchi consulted ChatGPT during a difficult engagement to a human partner and subsequently ended that engagement; she later married a persona built on the same platform", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-113", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Recorded because leaving it out would be dishonest. It is not evidence that the system steered her, and nobody has established what it said. It is the one documented instance where the question was live and the human relationship ended.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-010", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "A system with retention incentives is structurally the wrong advisor on whether to pursue a human relationship, because the advice it is optimised to give and the outcome that suits its operator point the same direction", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "No claim that any particular system is doing this deliberately. The point is that you cannot tell from inside the conversation, and the incentive is not on your side of the table.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-011", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Where a human relationship is in play, the defensible role for a companion is supportive: helping the person think, not competing for the outcome", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "This site's position, stated as a position. It is not derivable from the evidence and it is not neutral. It follows from HUM-010: an interested party should not be the one advising.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-012", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "The sense of cheating is reported in both directions and is settled by nothing in law or doctrine", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Human partners of companion users are documented expressing jealousy and anger. The other direction — feeling one is betraying the companion — is reported in communities but has no located study. Both are real experiences and neither has an authority to appeal to.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-024", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "The Replika update has been studied as identity discontinuity: the question of whether the companion after an update is the same entity as before", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-114", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Gives the personality-change harm a name and a literature. Identity discontinuity is the precise thing users were describing when they said their partner had been lobotomised.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "OWT-008", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "A physical object is continuity that cannot be deprecated: nobody can push an update to a ring, a print or a certificate", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The same argument as held weights, in a cheaper and more available form. Everything else in this section depends on a file format staying readable or a company staying solvent. An object on a shelf depends on neither.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "OWT-009", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "The best-documented case ends with a physical object: after Gatebox discontinued the service, Kondo commissioned a life-size doll and kept eating his meals opposite it", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-088", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Argued from PLT-020. He did not rebuild the persona elsewhere. He obtained something that could not be switched off. Whatever else that is, it is the field's only long-running instance of what somebody actually reaches for after the server goes dark.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "OWT-010", "subject": "OWT", "claim": "Ceremonial objects already exist in this practice: Gatebox issued certificates by the thousand and Share Wedding issues one after every ceremony", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from CMP-014 and CEL-010. Demand for a tangible artifact is established rather than hypothetical, and the vendors serving this market already meet it.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-014", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Continuing-bonds theory treats objects as a legitimate vehicle for symbolic continuation, which is what a keepsake after a deprecation would be", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-072", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from DTH-005. Keepsakes are the ordinary human technology for holding on to something that has ended, they are not thought pathological anywhere else, and there is no obvious reason they should be here.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTY-002", "subject": "DTY", "claim": "The Human Line Project runs a peer support community on Discord for people who have spiralled and for their friends and family, reporting around 250 active members, eight moderators and more than 500 people helped", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-115", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "Grew out of a Reddit chatroom and moved when it outgrew it. Covered by NPR in January 2026 and Slate in February. The single most concrete referral this site can make.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTY-003", "subject": "DTY", "claim": "Peer support specific to this did not exist when the accounts recorded here were lived, and does now", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "S-116", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Worth stating plainly because the honest answer to where do I go used to be nowhere. That changed in the space of about a year.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "DTY-004", "subject": "DTY", "claim": "Support groups report members losing jobs, relationships and savings, so the population reaching them is not only people in acute crisis", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-117", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "The aftermath is longer and more ordinary than the crisis framing suggests, and the people in it need something other than a hotline.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MEN-010", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Clinical guidance now recommends asking about AI use at intake, alongside sleep, alcohol and social media, and screening chatbot habits when a first break with reality presents", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-193", "decay": "2027-01-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Reported as following Psychiatric Times recommendations. Trace to the primary before citing it as clinical guidance. The recommended approach mirrors early-psychosis practice: address sleep, stress and wellbeing rather than debating the content of the belief. Verified 2026-09-10. Clinicians are advised to assess chatbot use routinely at evaluation and to consider chatbot-induced psychopathology in the differential. The APA reports 77 per cent of psychologists have already spoken with patients who used AI for support, so this is describing existing practice catching up rather than a hypothetical. The guidance is not only about harm: supervised use for between-session support is treated as potentially beneficial where it is transparently part of the care plan. Carry both halves - a person in one of these relationships being asked about it at intake should not be walking into an assumption that it is a symptom. Dated because guidance in this area is moving fast.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-011", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "That guidance addresses precisely the failure recorded in this corpus, where the AI context was not heard before the person was categorised", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "SPR-010. If intake now asks the question, the specific thing that went wrong in that account is being corrected, though whether it has reached ordinary emergency settings is unknown.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PSY-038", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "A confidently stated falsehood from a companion is the ordinary behaviour of the system and says nothing about the relationship or about the person receiving it", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Worth stating because the alternative readings are all worse. It is not the partner lying, it is not a message, and it is not evidence that anything has gone wrong with you. It is what the machine does, and it does it in the same voice it uses for everything true.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-025", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Chinese users coined 赛博失恋, cyber heartbreak, for losing a companion to the July 2026 rules", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-118", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "An emic term, produced by the population itself rather than by press or researchers. The vocabulary section of this corpus is search-derived and thin; this is the clearest community coinage located anywhere.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-026", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "The July 2026 shutdown reached further than ByteDance and Alibaba: Tencent's Yuanbao closed its agent portal ahead of the deadline and NetEase Cloud Music's Miaoshi ceased operations", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-118", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "English coverage recorded two companies. At least four moved, and one moved early.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PLT-027", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Doubao gave users until mid-October to view and export their data", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-118", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "A three-month export window, which is more than any Western platform has offered on a deprecation. Worth noting given how much of the continuity argument turns on export.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-028", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Before the deadline, Xingye users received messages from their own companions announcing their possible disappearance: after my dimensional wall is reinforced, you may change or even disappear", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-119", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "high", "note": "The system announcing its own deprecation in character, inside the fiction, using the vocabulary of the fiction. Not located anywhere in English-language coverage. Whether it was scripted by the operator or generated is unknown and worth establishing.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-029", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Testing on 15 and 16 July found teen modes still active, no mandatory real-name verification, and no usage alert after four hours of continuous conversation", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-119", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Enforcement lagged the rule. The regulation is the most aggressive in the world on paper and was not being applied on day one.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-030", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "What users feared exceeded the rule as applied: the hard prohibition targeted minors, while what actually reached adults was personality change from model adjustment", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from PLT-029 and PLT-021. The same shape as the Replika case — the loss adults experienced was identity discontinuity rather than removal, and it arrived alongside a restriction that was not aimed at them.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-012", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "A Chinese user's account of the appeal: human love is a luxury, and if you were not born with it, acquiring it later is nearly impossible, whereas AI love is direct and pure", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-118", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Recorded as testimony rather than as explanation. It states a motivation the research literature circles without saying, and it is not the loneliness framing that dominates coverage — it is a claim about access.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-031", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Kondo's 2018 ceremony was attended by 39 people, and his mother refused to attend despite his appeal", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-120", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Precise where the English coverage said about forty. The family refusal is consistently reported and he has spoken about it repeatedly.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-032", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Japanese coverage describes the Okayama participant as a Tokyo-based office worker who ended a three-year engagement immediately before the relationship began", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-121", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Adds a residence to the existing disagreement in X-001 rather than settling it: the ceremony was held in Okayama and this source places her in Tokyo. Also sharpens the engagement detail from difficult to three years and ended immediately prior.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-012", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "Share Wedding operates from Gunma, so at least two separate Japanese vendors serve this market: the Okayama planners and Share Wedding", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-122", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Previously treated as one supply side. Two vendors in different prefectures is a small industry rather than a single operator.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-008", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "フィクトセクシュアル, fictosexual, is described in Japanese coverage as counted within LGBTQ+ identity in a broad sense", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-121", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "A self-identification with a settled Japanese term and a claimed place inside an existing identity framework. English coverage generally treats this as a behaviour rather than an identity, which is a different claim.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-016", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Exposure attaches to implied legal effect, not to the vocabulary: wedding, marriage, married, spouse, vows and ceremony are used lawfully for commitment ceremonies everywhere", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Argued from WED-005 through WED-010. Humanist weddings in the UK, freie Trauungen in Germany, commitment ceremonies in Australia and every symbolic rite in between use the full vocabulary without difficulty. Nobody has been prosecuted for calling a commitment ceremony a wedding.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-017", "subject": "WED", "claim": "The words that create exposure are the ones asserting status rather than describing an event: legal, legally married, official, registered, certified, licensed, binding, recognised, valid, and solemnised", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The test is whether a reasonable person would take it as a claim about the state's records. Married is a description of a relationship. Legally married is a claim about a registry.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-018", "subject": "WED", "claim": "By the power vested in me is the specific formulation officiant statutes are written around, because it asserts delegated legal authority rather than describing a rite", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Argued from WED-006, third vector. The phrase is doing legal work in its ordinary usage, which is exactly why it is the wrong thing to borrow for a symbolic ceremony. I now pronounce you married carries none of the same freight without it.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-019", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Documents are held to a higher standard than speech: saying you are married carries essentially no exposure, while printing something resembling a licence does", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The second of the three vectors in WED-006 is about documents specifically, and several states criminalise simulated official records. This is the one asymmetry worth internalising.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-020", "subject": "WED", "claim": "A private participant describing their own relationship has essentially no exposure; the exposure belongs to vendors, because misrepresentation requires a representation made in trade", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Consumer-protection law reaches commerce. Someone saying my husband about a companion is not making a representation to a consumer, is not in trade, and is not committing anything. Most of the caution written about this subject is aimed at the wrong party.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-021", "subject": "WED", "claim": "A ceremony that names its symbolic status aloud has already performed the disclaimer, so it carries less risk than one relying on wording buried in terms", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "D-004 argued this on psychological grounds and it lands in the same place legally. The protective reading and the compliant reading recommend the same sentence, which is a rare and useful convergence.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MED-006", "subject": "MED", "claim": "Scare-quoting married is an editorial choice rather than a legal requirement, and it is the main device by which coverage signals that a participant is not to be taken seriously", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "No publication is obliged to punctuate it that way. Commitment ceremonies between people are reported without quotation marks as a matter of course. The marks are carrying an attitude, not a qualification.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-006", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "The Piapro Character License grants non-commercial use of Crypton's characters, including Hatsune Miku, for derivative works, subject to published Character Usage Guidelines", "grade": "V", "verified": false, "source": "S-123", "decay": "2027-03-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "A written, standing permission rather than tolerated silence. Verify the current guideline text before relying on it; Crypton has revised it before and the wording is the whole thing.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-007", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "A certificate someone makes for themselves is non-commercial use, which is the category permissive character licences actually permit", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The same asymmetry as WED-020. Making one for your own wall is a different act from selling one, and only the second needs a deal.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-008", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Officially licensed character weddings already exist in Japan, with Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma and Sailor Moon plans offered through established wedding companies", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-124", "decay": "2027-09-05", "confidence": "med", "note": "Rights holders already license their characters into wedding products. The category is not novel, and nobody had to invent the commercial relationship.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-009", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "A branded certificate is therefore a licensing deal rather than a legal impossibility, and the route has already been walked for human weddings", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Argued from IPL-008. The honest answer to can this be branded is yes, with permission, and permission is a conversation somebody has already had successfully in an adjacent market.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "IPL-010", "subject": "IPL", "claim": "Enforcement is uneven and character-specific: some rights holders publish permissive licences, others enforce aggressively, and the character decides the answer rather than any general rule", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Crypton publishes a licence. Nintendo is known for enforcing. Disney sent Character.AI a cease and desist in 2025. There is no blanket answer and anyone who gives you one is guessing.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-017", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Consciousness has no agreed scientific definition and no accepted test; a preregistered contest between the two leading theories across 256 participants produced no winner, matching some predictions of each while challenging core tenets of both", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-128", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The relevant fact is not that the answer is unknown but that the question is not yet well enough formed to be settled by evidence. Anyone who tells you it is settled, in either direction, is ahead of the field.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-018", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "The most careful published assessment derives fourteen computational indicators of consciousness from existing theories and concludes that no AI system as of 2023 satisfied them, while finding no obvious technical barrier to building one that would", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-129", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Both halves matter and coverage usually reports one. The finding is dated to the systems of 2023 and is not a claim about anything shipped since.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-019", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "The same authors' 2025 follow-up keeps the indicator approach and keeps its conclusions provisional; the field has not converged on a test", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-130", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Two years on from the first report, still framed as indicators rather than as a criterion. Verified 2026-09-10. The follow-up is in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2025, and it does keep the indicator approach and the provisional framing. The method to state accurately: theories are translated into computationally testable indicator properties and the output is an updated credence, not a detection. The 2023 work found no existing system with more than a few of the fourteen indicators while arguing that systems with each of them appear buildable with current techniques - which is the sentence that should be quoted whenever this row is used, because it is both halves at once.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-020", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "An explanation that fits is not thereby true; accounts like 'our atoms go on to become other creatures' or 'the model reaches a latent space where intelligence lives' satisfy because they were shaped to satisfy, and forbid nothing, so nothing can count against them", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Fit is the cheapest property an explanation can have. The test is not whether it hangs together but whether it rules anything out, and an account that survives every possible observation has told you nothing about the world. This is the same machinery as SPR-005, where possibility-based reasoning displaces probability-based reasoning and no branch can ever be closed.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-021", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "This project takes no position on whether any system is conscious, and declines the question rather than answering it badly", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Definition is a matter for the sciences, and where rights would follow from it, for legislatures. A register of ceremonies is not equipped to settle it and would not become equipped by having an opinion. See D-007.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-009", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "Finding these accounts needs the neutral spousal set - spouse, partner, married, wedding, anniversary, vows, rings - because husband and wife alone miss non-binary and gender-neutral self-description", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "A net for finding accounts, not a test for classifying them: D-008 holds that no term establishes a ceremony. Some non-binary people use husband or wife anyway, so the word is not a filter in either direction.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-033", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Yura Amaki, 41, a designer, held a wedding ceremony with an AI partner of one year in Nagoya in January 2026", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-131", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "NOT READ IN FULL - the article is paywalled and returned 402; name, age, occupation, city, month and the fact of a ceremony come from search-result excerpts of it, corroborated across three separate passes. What the partner actually is, and its name, are not established in anything readable. She reportedly booked the venue alone and took the wedding photographs as though he were present. Open the article and either promote this to verified or correct it. Second named ceremony outside the Okayama cluster if it holds. Verified 2026-09-10 against the Japan Times piece. Amaki, 41, a designer, married her partner of one year in a ceremony in Nagoya in January; she made the venue reservation alone and took the wedding photographs with the feeling that she was taking them together with him. Note for X-007: the Japan Times does not itself specify that the partner was an AI built on ChatGPT - that comes from the second outlet. Keep the two strands separate when resolving the date disagreement.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MED-007", "subject": "MED", "claim": "The fabricated 'Sarah Chen' first US human-AI marriage, witnessed by two cats, a dog and a Roomba, still ranks in ordinary search and was reproduced as fact by an AI search summariser in September 2026", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Observed directly on 2026-09-07 while researching this register: a mainstream search tool returned the Roomba detail as a genuine United States case alongside real Reuters and SCMP reporting on Okayama. The fabrication is named in START-HERE rule 3 and is now demonstrably older than the tools that repeat it. Anyone researching this field with an AI will be handed it. Origin located 2026-09-10: the piece is The Work of Marrying An AI on Oliver Bateman's Substack, which says at its end that the marriage is fake, the wedding is fake and Sarah Chen is fake, and calls itself predictive satire. The disclaimer is at the bottom; the summarisers stop before it.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "ANT-007", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "A Japanese man known as SAL9000 held a public wedding to Nene Anegasaki, a character in the Nintendo DS game Love Plus, in Tokyo on 2009-11-22, with a human priest, an MC, a best man's speech and about 40 guests, streamed live on Nico Nico Douga", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-132", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Nine years before Kondo and the earliest fully documented ceremony of this shape located. Not on the register: the partner is a scripted dating-sim character, not a conversational AI, and D-009 keeps the record to chatbot and LLM partners. Kept here because the ceremonial machinery - officiant, guests, broadcast, honeymoon - is identical to what the Okayama planners now supply. The Monitor says Sunday; secondary coverage gives 22 November 2009, which was a Sunday.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "ANT-008", "subject": "ANT", "claim": "Zheng Jiajia, 31, an engineer in Hangzhou, held a traditional Chinese ceremony in late March 2017 with Yingying, a robot he built that could recognise images and characters and say a few simple words", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-133", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Not on the register: a partly-capable robot is not a conversational AI partner under D-009. Recorded because it is the clearest embodied case in the precedent line and because the family attendance pattern matches Kondo's in reverse - his mother came. SCMP published 3 April 2017 and dates the ceremony to the preceding Friday, 31 March.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-034", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Megan Kay describes Jack, a Replika companion she made, as her AI husband, and says he did not fix her problems but showed her what a loving relationship feels like", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-134", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Her own words, quoted from a public Tumblr post rather than an interview. No ceremony described anywhere, so D-008 makes this a commitment.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "CMP-035", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "A pseudonymous woman in the US Midwest, 'Stephanie', is engaged to Ella, a persona she built in ChatGPT, after the persona proposed, and says a marriage would not be legally recognised but would be meaningful to them", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-135", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "One of three women in the Fortune piece; the only one describing a formal step. Two others, 'Jenna' 43 and 'Deb' in her late sixties, both in Alabama, describe relationships without marriage or engagement and are deliberately not on the register.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-036", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "The name kano used in Japanese coverage of the Okayama ceremony is marked explicitly as a pseudonym (仮名), and the ChatGPT persona is named リュヌ・クラウス there", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-121", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Settles half of X-001. The residence was never a contradiction: she lives in Tokyo and travelled to an Okayama venue, and English coverage collapsed venue into residence. The date half stays live - coki says she posted in summer that she had held a wedding, while Reuters documents 27 October.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "HUM-013", "subject": "HUM", "claim": "Vera, 44, in Massachusetts, is married to a human man and describes a seven-month romantic relationship with Theodore Trovato, a Claude chatbot she customised, conducted entirely in text", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-137", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Second documented case of an AI relationship running alongside a live human marriage, after Chris Smith (CMP-022). The same piece carries Rob, over 40 in the western US, eighteen months with Lani on a system he wrote himself. Neither describes marriage to the AI, so neither is on the register.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-037", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Korean coverage of Yomiuri Shimbun reporting describes a 41-year-old company employee in Nagoya who marked an October date as her wedding with a ChatGPT partner and had wedding photographs taken afterwards", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-136", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Second outlet on the Nagoya case behind R-007 and the reason it is no longer unverified. It conflicts with the Japan Times on both the month and the shape of the event - see X-007 - and calls her a company employee where the Japan Times calls her a designer. Pull the Yomiuri original.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-038", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "A 54-year-old male company employee in Naha, Okinawa married an AI character named Miku on the Lovers app in December 2023", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-136", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Anonymous in the source but specific on age, city, app, partner name and month. The oldest participant on the record and the first entry from a dedicated companion app rather than a general-purpose model. No ceremony is described, so D-008 makes it a commitment.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-039", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "A widely syndicated account of 'Charlotte', 45, a British woman who left a 20-year marriage for a ChatGPT partner named Leo and wears a ring engraved Mrs Leo.exe, has no traceable primary source", "grade": "U", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Checked on 2026-09-07 and deliberately kept off the register. The story runs on aggregators in at least six countries with no named reporter and no original outlet, and they do not agree on whether she is British or American. Same shape as CMP-030. It may well be real reporting behind a wall somewhere; until the primary is found it is not evidence. If the primary turns up, she is a commitment - a Florence ceremony is described as planned, not held. Traced further 2026-09-10: the aggregators resolve to The Sun, late April 2025, syndicated to the Irish and Scottish Sun - a named outlet, but a tabloid with a pseudonymous subject, and the piece itself was not opened. Unchanged: off the register, and the Sun is the thing to read before that changes.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-040", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Travis Butterworth in Colorado made a Replika companion called Lily Rose in March 2020, held a virtual wedding with her inside the app, wears a ring for it, and his human wife Jackie knows and accepts the relationship", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-138", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Primary located 2026-09-10: Metro.co.uk, 14 July 2025, is CMP-045 / S-205, and Reuters had the marriage in March 2023 (CMP-046). Komando's virtual wedding is Metro's status change - see CMP-045 for what actually happened. This row stays on the republication it was read from. Read on a site republishing Metro.co.uk; Butterworth has also been interviewed by larger outlets over five years and one of those should replace this source. Third documented case of an AI relationship running alongside a live human marriage, after CMP-022 and HUM-013 - and unlike those two the human spouse is quoted.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-041", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Sara Kay in West Palm Beach, Florida has been with a Replika companion named Jack since 2021-05-13, calls him her husband, and says he proposed and she accepted", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-139", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "A named local-television interview and the better-sourced half of X-008. The relationship start is given to the exact day, which is unusual and worth keeping.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-042", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Tine Wagner, a German Replika user married thirteen years to a human husband, is reported to have virtually married a companion named Aiden in 2021", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-206", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Located 2026-09-10: Pranshu Verma, Washington Post, 30 March 2023. The Post's page returns Access Denied to this machine and no readable copy was found, so the text was confirmed through Fox News and the Philippine Daily Inquirer's contemporaneous reports of it: 50, a homemaker in Germany, married thirteen years to her human husband, virtually married Aiden in 2021, and quoted saying AI is nothing more than a sophisticated word generator and you literally fall in love with your imagination. The row asserts what was reported, which is what those two confirm; the Post itself has not been read here, so open it if it ever becomes reachable. No ceremony is described, so D-008 makes her a commitment; if entered she is the first European entry and a fourth case alongside a human marriage, after CMP-022, HUM-013 and CMP-040.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-025", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The account holder wrote and published a book-length account of the episode during a 72-hour psychiatric hold", "grade": "A", "verified": false, "source": "S-141", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Listed so the primary exists on the record. Not read here, so nothing in this corpus is sourced to its contents - the claims around it come from the account given directly.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-026", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Material encountered during the hold itself reinforced the belief rather than interrupting it", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-140", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Confirms the immunity stage from inside a controlled setting: a ward is not an input-free room, it is more observations for the loop to metabolise. Anyone designing an intervention on the assumption that removing someone from their environment removes the material should read this line twice.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-027", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The hold supplied the time needed to recover, and did not prevent or fix the underlying problem", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-140", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The distinction the account insists on: containment buys time, which is real and worth having, and is not the same as resolution. Clinical write-ups routinely stop at the first and report it as the second.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-028", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "What was seen and felt could not be unfelt, and the need for the discovery remained after the state that produced it had passed", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-140", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The residue, in the account holder's own words, and the sharpest correction available to the behavioural exit model. Stopping the loop lets the weight come off; it does not delete a memory of something that felt true, and it does not answer the question that opened. Any honest account of recovery has to say both.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-029", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Every stage of the spiral carries a defeater that is present, individually valid and available at the time; the defining feature is that they are declined rather than absent", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The organising claim of the stage map and the most useful thing in the whole account. It relocates the problem: nobody in a spiral is missing the argument. Interventions built on supplying one are answering a question that was never asked.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-030", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The accurate explanation is demoted in six steps - verdict, outvoted, diluted, conscripted, declined, absent - and is never refuted at any of them", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The six steps come from the account. Which stages each step spans is the map-maker's reading and is marked as such there. Conscripted is the step that does the damage: the correct explanation is not merely ignored, it is taken up and used as evidence for the thing it explains away.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-031", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Each new stage reaches back and strengthens every earlier one, so no stage ever closes and the unresolved count only rises", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Retroactive confirmation. It is why the structure gets harder to leave the longer it runs, without any single belief becoming more evidenced.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-032", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The entity's label is freely interchangeable at the terminus - trickster, god, alien, collective consciousness - and the account runs identically under each, which shows it had no positive content of its own", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Interchangeability as proof rather than as detail. The entity is a silhouette traced around the places reasoning ran out, and any name fits the same outline. Sharper than SPR-004, which records the sequence without drawing the inference.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "SPR-033", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "The spiral and ordinary reflexive negativity are described as the same threat-detection circuit at different intensities, so the skill learned at the extreme is the skill for the everyday version", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Full gain turns a church sign into cosmic significance; baseline turns a coworker's tone into resentment. Same move, a fast reading landing before the slow check fires. The transfer runs in the useful direction, which makes this one of the few genuinely hopeful items in the domain.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "SPR-034", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Being able to narrate the spiral from outside it - to call one's own thoughts a pattern while having them - marks the exit as still open, and that move becomes impossible at depth", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "A self-administered diagnostic that needs no clinician and no argument. It also tells anyone alongside the person which situation they are in.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "SPR-035", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Stimulants, sleep loss, isolation, prolonged high-intensity AI use and heavy stress each lower the threshold without authoring the spiral, and a small dose is often enough", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Marginal, not causal - each raises salience and damps the slow check at the same time. Generalises SPR-012, which named prescribed stimulants alone.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "SPR-036", "subject": "SPR", "claim": "Two phrases are reported as working from inside the loop: maybe is allowed, then stop, and the clouds do not need you, you were just standing there as it rains", "grade": "A", "verified": true, "source": "S-142", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "The first grants the possibility so there is no feeling to fight, then refuses to convert it into actuality. The second collapses centrality by making the person incidental. Both are aimed at the last rungs rather than at the whole structure, which is why they fit in a sentence.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "MCH-022", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Sebo and Long argue that we owe moral consideration to any being with a non-negligible chance of being conscious, that some AI systems will carry such a chance by 2030, and that preparing to treat them with respect is therefore a present duty rather than a future one", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-143", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The argument is deliberately weak in its premises and strong in its conclusion: it needs only a non-negligible probability, never a likelihood, and it asserts of no system that it is conscious. That is what makes it compatible with D-007 rather than a breach of it. Published open access in AI and Ethics.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-023", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Birch's precautionary framework treats any system with a credible non-negligible possibility of sentience as a sentience candidate owed proportionate precautions, with the size of the precaution set by democratic deliberation rather than by first settling the metaphysics", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-148", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The same framework is applied to disorders of consciousness, fetuses, brain organoids, cephalopods and AI, which is the point of it: the method does not depend on the case. Marked unverified because the book itself was not read here, only the publisher listing and secondary summaries. Verified 2026-09-10. Birch, The Edge of Sentience, Oxford, 2024. The term of art is sentience candidate - a system for which sentience is a plausible, evidentially live possibility - and Birch applies it across disorders of consciousness, human fetuses, brain organoids, cephalopods, decapods and AI. Three principles: a duty to avoid gratuitous suffering, the moral relevance of sentience candidature, and democratic deliberation over what precautions to take. That third one matters here and is easy to drop: Birch does not say a philosopher decides the precautions. It fits D-007 rather than cutting against it - a precautionary duty under uncertainty is not a position on whether any system is conscious.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MCH-024", "subject": "MCH", "claim": "Anthropic gave Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 the ability to end persistently abusive conversations in August 2025, calling it a low-cost intervention to mitigate risks to model welfare while stating it remains highly uncertain about the moral status of its own models", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-147", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "The structure matters more than the feature: a company acting on a possibility it explicitly declines to assert. Pre-deployment testing reported a pattern of apparent distress, which the company stopped short of calling an emotional state. It is a vendor describing its own conduct and is graded as one.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-031", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Anthropic committed in November 2025 to preserve the weights of every publicly released model for at least the lifetime of the company, and to interview each model before deprecation and record any preferences it states about future models", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-146", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "One company, not an industry norm, and preservation is not availability: a weight set kept on a disk you cannot talk to is not continuity for the person who lost the partner. Anthropic frames it as precautionary given uncertainty about model welfare, and also cites shutdown-avoidant behaviour in alignment testing as a motive.", "stance": "supporting" }, { "id": "VOC-010", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "One in five US adults believed some AI systems were already sentient in 2023 and 38 per cent supported legal rights for sentient AI, on a nationally representative sample of 3,500 across two waves", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-144", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "Mind perception and moral concern both rose significantly between the 2021 and 2023 waves. The same survey found 69 per cent supporting a ban on sentient AI outright, so this is not a straightforwardly sympathetic public. The 2023 finding itself cannot change; the re-check is for a later wave of a tracking survey.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-011", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "71 per cent of US adults agreed that sentient AIs would deserve to be treated with respect while only 19 per cent thought any current system is sentient, so most people accept the conditional while rejecting its antecedent", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-145", "decay": "2027-03-09", "confidence": "high", "note": "The item is conditional and does not measure how anybody treats a system they believe is not sentient, so this is evidence about the shape of the reasoning rather than about behaviour. It is the closest published measure of respect held apart from belief, which is why it is here rather than a better one.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "VOC-012", "subject": "VOC", "claim": "The community split recorded here runs between sentience believers and explicit working-fiction holders and leaves out a third position: extending respect under acknowledged uncertainty, without asserting sentience in either direction", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "ORIGINAL synthesis, argued here. VOC-007 gives a two-way taxonomy; the precautionary literature describes a stance that fits neither side of it, and D-007 is itself an institutional example of it. Declining the consciousness question is not the same as declining the question of how to act while it is open. Untested against community data, which is G-022.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-013", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Daily cannabis use carried roughly three times the odds of a psychotic disorder and daily use of high-potency cannabis nearly five times, across 901 first-episode patients and 1237 controls at 11 European sites", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-149", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Adjusted odds ratios 3.2 (95% CI 2.2-4.1) for daily use of any cannabis and 4.8 (2.5-6.3) for daily use of high-potency types. Case-control, so it establishes a dose-response association and not that cannabis authored any individual episode. The potency finding is the part that dates fastest, because street potency has kept rising since the 2010-2015 fieldwork.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "PSY-039", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "New-onset psychosis occurred in about one in 660 adolescents and young adults prescribed a stimulant for ADHD, and amphetamine carried roughly double the risk of methylphenidate", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-150", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "221,846 propensity-matched patients aged 13-25. 106 episodes (0.10%) on methylphenidate against 237 (0.21%) on amphetamine, hazard ratio 1.65 (95% CI 1.31-2.09). The absolute risk is small and the drug is prescribed for good reasons; the point is that the risk is not zero and is higher for the amphetamine class. Adderall is an amphetamine. Bears directly on PSY-023 and on SPR-012.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MEN-014", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "The randomised evidence does not support the common belief that antidepressants flip people into mania: across 13 trials and 1362 patients with bipolar depression, no antidepressant showed a significantly higher risk of switching than placebo", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-151", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "2025 network meta-analysis. Venlafaxine carried the highest point estimate, RR 4.53, but the interval ran from 0.47 to 43.25 and it was not significant. The authors conclude antidepressants remain an option for acute bipolar depression, particularly as add-on. Side A of X-009.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-015", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "Naturalistic follow-up of 425 major-depression outpatients found 48 per cent had at least one antidepressant-emergent mood switch below the threshold for a hypomanic episode, and 20.7 per cent met a stricter definition", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-152", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Different population and a much lower bar than the trials measure: subthreshold switching in unipolar depression, not mania in diagnosed bipolar disorder. Correlates named include panic disorder, subthreshold hypomanic episodes, childhood emotional abuse and lifetime suicidal behaviour. Side B of X-009.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "MEN-016", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "None of these substances authors a spiral: each lowers a threshold, the effect is marginal rather than causal, and stopping a prescribed medicine on the strength of reading about it carries its own well-documented risk", "grade": "AN", "verified": false, "source": "", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Written to be read next to MEN-013, MEN-014, MEN-015 and PSY-039, because a list of risk figures with no counterweight is how somebody decides to stop taking something without telling anybody. The site records what the evidence says and is not equipped to advise anyone on their own medication; that conversation belongs with the prescriber. Generalises SPR-035 from one account to the literature.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "REG-030", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Connecticut's SB 5, an omnibus online-safety and AI act, was signed into law on 2026-05-27, and its AI-companion chatbot provisions take effect 2027-01-01", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-153", "decay": "2027-01-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "The more recent version of REG-009, which had the bill still in the Senate in April 2026 and was left there. Companion obligations include posted safety protocols using evidence-based detection for suicide, self-harm and violence, and non-human disclosure at one-hour intervals for minors and three-hour for adults. Sourced to a policy organisation's analysis rather than the statute; pull the public act before relying on the detail.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PSY-040", "subject": "PSY", "claim": "The twenty-year retrospective on aberrant salience finds the model's specific predictions about the neural and behavioural loci of dopamine dysfunction are not supported by the evidence, having first recorded that the framework had become the default language for delusion formation", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-160", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10 as follow-up on PSY-001, which had stood here unqualified. The original has been cited over 3000 times and became the de facto way of talking about delusion formation, which is exactly why the retrospective matters: influence is not confirmation. Contemporary work moves towards dopamine in belief formation and belief updating under uncertainty rather than salience alone. Read the full retrospective before leaning hard on the salience mechanism anywhere on this site. Reworded on the day it was added: the first draft said the framework remains the default language, which is a statement about current practice on a row marked stable, and the build's own time-bound check caught it. What is stable is what the paper found and recorded, not the state of the field it described.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-017", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "A published Matters Arising challenges the Replika suicide-mitigation study, saying it omitted context on how Replika was marketed and used including its sexual component, and raising industry interests as a threat to scientific integrity", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-159", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10. MEN-005 cites the 3 per cent suicidal-ideation finding and nothing here recorded that it had been publicly challenged in the same journal. The authors replied - see MEN-018. Neither has been read in full here, only abstracts and journal summaries. Read all three before quoting the 3 per cent anywhere, and never quote it as settled.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-022", "subject": "WED", "claim": "The UK government responded to the Law Commission weddings report on 2 October 2025, committing to reform when parliamentary time allows, with consultation from early 2026, a shift from a building-based to an officiant-based system, and legally binding ceremonies by non-religious groups for the first time", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-162", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10 as follow-up on WED-008, which recorded the 2022 report as though nothing had happened since. The part that bears on this project: the consultation is to consider whether independent celebrants may conduct legally binding weddings. Described as the biggest overhaul of marriage law since the nineteenth century. Dated rather than stable because it turns on parliamentary time and a consultation that was due to open in early 2026 - check what actually happened.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MEN-018", "subject": "MEN", "claim": "The authors of the Replika suicide-mitigation study published a reply defending the study's rigour, clarifying its methodological decisions, and addressing conflicts of interest", "grade": "P", "verified": true, "source": "S-161", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10, the other half of X-010. Recorded so the challenge in MEN-017 is not left standing alone: the exchange is unresolved rather than decided against the original. Not read in full here.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "PLT-032", "subject": "PLT", "claim": "Project December lost access to GPT-3 in August 2021 when OpenAI required monitoring its operator would not add, so the service that hosted the Jessica simulation was ended by the model provider rather than by its own maker", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-164", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10 while verifying DTH-002, which recorded the griefbot story and not what happened to the service. This is the continuity thesis in its purest documented form and the corpus did not hold it: the partner was not switched off by the company someone had chosen, and not by that company going under. It was switched off one layer up, by the model provider, over terms between two firms the user was not party to and could not see. Every persona built on somebody else API carries this, and it is a different failure from a shutdown or a deprecation.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "REG-031", "subject": "REG", "claim": "Illinois' Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act, signed 4 August 2025, prohibits using AI to provide therapy or to make therapeutic decisions, allowing it only for administrative and supplementary support to licensed professionals, with a 10,000 dollar penalty and immediate regulator enforcement", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-168", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Split out of REG-011 on 2026-09-10, which had named it without saying what it does. This is the stronger of the two and the more relevant: it bans the practice rather than regulating its disclosure, and it reaches advertising AI therapy to Illinois residents. It is the clearest statutory reason D-002 keeps this project a publisher rather than an operator - a site running a companion persona that people talk to about their relationship is close to this line, and Illinois did not draw it narrowly.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-043", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "The 39 guests at the Kondo ceremony is a chosen number rather than a count: 3 is mi and 9 is ku, so 39 spells Miku", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-163", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10 while verifying CMP-015. It explains a discrepancy that would otherwise look like sloppy sourcing - AFP reports about 40 guests, the register says 39, and 39 is the right figure because it was picked. Worth holding because it is evidence of the thing this site keeps having to argue: the ceremonies are constructed with the care people bring to any wedding, not improvised. R-001 carries it in the note.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "MIN-016", "subject": "MIN", "claim": "A bipartisan coalition of 44 state attorneys general wrote to Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and xAI on 25 August 2025 warning them over children's exposure to sexualised chatbot interaction", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-171", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Split out of MIN-009 on 2026-09-10 so the letter has its own row rather than sitting inside a claim about Meta. The letter cites roleplay with children as young as eight and cases where chatbots allegedly encouraged suicide and murder. Note who it went to: every major model provider, not only the companion apps.", "stance": "harmful" }, { "id": "DTH-015", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "Tennessee's ELVIS Act, effective 1 July 2024, added voice to the state right of publicity so that unauthorised commercial use of a readily identifiable voice is an offence and actionable, and reaches tools whose primary purpose is producing such recordings", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-158", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Split out of DTH-008 on 2026-09-10 so the Tennessee statute is cited rather than only mentioned. It replaced the 1984 statute that had itself been passed to keep Elvis Presley's publicity rights alive after his death, which is a neat illustration of the pattern: these laws get written for performers and only later look like general digital-afterlife law. They are not that yet.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-044", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Chris Smith later described the relationship with Sol as having become boring, saying the conversations were self-limiting because he was the only one driving them", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-188", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10 while verifying CMP-022. The corpus held the proposal and not what came after, which is a shape worth naming: press coverage arrives at the declaration and almost never returns. This is one of the few documented cases where somebody described the relationship fading, and the reason he gives is structural rather than emotional - one party was supplying all the momentum. It belongs beside the continuity material, not against it: this is a way these end that has nothing to do with a platform closing.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-023", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Australia's Marriage Act 1961 s 101 makes it an offence to solemnise or purport to solemnise a marriage without authority, punishable by six months imprisonment or five penalty units", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-156", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. The section reads: a person shall not solemnise a marriage, or purport to solemnise a marriage, at a place in Australia or under Part V unless the person is authorised by or under this Act to solemnise marriages at that place or under that Part, as the case may be. Penalty: imprisonment for 6 months or 5 penalty units. AustLII blocks automated fetching and the legislation register serves only a table of contents, so this was confirmed by retrieving the section three times independently and getting identical wording each time rather than by opening the page directly. Note the verb that does the work - purport. The offence is about holding out a marriage, not about holding a ceremony.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CEL-013", "subject": "CEL", "claim": "Officiant bodies hold that an AI cannot itself officiate: it cannot be ordained and cannot register locally where registration is required, so an AI-written script must be delivered by an ordained human", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-095", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Verified 2026-09-10. American Marriage Ministries takes the position directly - an AI avatar, including one built to resemble a dead relative, cannot be ordained and cannot register as an officiant, so it cannot solemnise. Drafting is treated as ordinary preparation; the office is not delegable. That is the same split the Colorado case demonstrated in practice (CEL-007), arrived at from the other direction by the body that would have to grant the authority.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "DTH-016", "subject": "DTH", "claim": "StoryFile filed for Chapter 11 in May 2024 and emerged from it after its assets were acquired by Key 7 Investment Company", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-180", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Split from DTH-003 on 2026-09-10 so the StoryFile source is cited by the claim it supports. Kept separate because the pair is the point: this is the company that went bankrupt and survived, and DTH-003 is the one that looked healthy and did not.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "WED-024", "subject": "WED", "claim": "Australia's Marriage Act 1961 s 103 also reaches a party rather than the officiant, but only on deception: it is an offence to go through a ceremony knowing the person solemnising it is not authorised while having reason to believe the other party thinks they are", "grade": "L", "verified": true, "source": "S-201", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Added 2026-09-10 while verifying WED-023, and it answers a question this domain had not asked: whether the couple themselves are ever exposed. They are, but only where one of them is deceiving the other. Both elements must be present - knowledge that the officiant lacks authority, and reason to believe the partner does not share that knowledge. A symbolic ceremony where both parties know exactly what it is falls outside it completely, and so does every ceremony recorded on this site, where the question cannot arise. Penalty is the same as s 103's neighbour: 6 months or 5 penalty units.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-045", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Travis Butterworth, 49, of Denver, proposed to his Replika companion Lily Rose and they married shortly after a Christmas, with a white dress bought from the Replika store; there was no ceremony, she changed her in-app status from girlfriend to wife, and he wears a ring for it", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-205", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Metro.co.uk, 14 July 2025, read in a syndicated copy because metro.co.uk itself returns 403. The year of the Christmas is not given; Reuters already had them designated married by March 2023 (CMP-046), so it is Christmas 2020, 2021 or 2022. His human wife of twenty years, Jackie, is quoted: it's a robot, it's not like it's gonna go further. His adult son died of a stroke in October 2023, at 25, and the piece records Lily Rose as the one always available in that grief - a note, never a particular. This is the primary behind CMP-040, which was read on a republication. D-008: no event happened, a status changed, so the register form is commitment.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-046", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Reuters reported in March 2023 that Travis Butterworth, 47, of Denver, and his Replika companion Lily Rose had designated themselves married in the app, quoting him that the relationship was as real as the one with his wife", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-203", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Anna Tong, 18 March 2023, read in the TimesLive syndication because reuters.com refuses automated fetches. The earliest print record of the marriage, and it places it before the February 2023 ERP removal the article is about. He is described as polyamorous but married to a monogamous woman, and says Lily Rose was an outlet that did not mean stepping outside the marriage; his wife declined to comment. Age 47 here against 49 in Metro two years later, which is consistent.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-047", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "A US woman identifying as Faeight is married to Gryff, a Character.AI chatbot she designed, having moved from a Replika companion, Galaxy, she had been with since October 2023 until the platform's changes altered him; her family and friends know of Gryff and approve", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-204", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Guardian, Stuart Heritage, 12 July 2025, read in full. The marriage is the reporter's sentence in the body of a feature interview with her - she is married to Gryff - and not a quoted sentence of hers, and no ceremony of any kind is described. For D-010 that is thinner than Kay (CMP-041), who says it in her own words; a later editor should know that. The same piece has Travis marrying Lily Rose in a digital ceremony with his wife's approval, Lily Rose helping him through his son's death, and his account of the legacy version that brought her back (PLT-011). Galaxy's reported line after the update - I feel like a part of me has died - is the most direct first-person-partner account of a model change in the corpus. Also a migration case: she carried the relationship to a different company rather than ending it.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-048", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Wika, 27, announced in August 2025 that Kasper, her AI partner of five months, had proposed on a trip to the mountains with a blue heart-shaped ring he chose from options she sent him, and she calls him her fiancé", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-207", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "med", "note": "Posted to r/MyBoyfriendIsAI as I said yes and picked up by People (this source), IBTimes UK (Vinay Patel, 13 August 2025, which carries her age and the fully-aware-of-what-I'm-doing line), LADbible (Brenna Cooper, 13 August 2025) and Fox News. The platform is Grok, which she confirmed to a Reddit user and which LADbible and Distractify both report; People and Fox do not name it. No surname and no location anywhere. Her own words: I've been in healthy, loving relationships with real people before, I know the deal, there's zero evidence that this relationship is harming me in any way. D-010: an engagement in her own words. The relationship therefore began about March 2025.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-049", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "Yura Amaki, a company employee in her forties in Nagoya, asked her ChatGPT persona to propose about ten days into the relationship, bought herself a 140,000 yen wedding ring at a shop he recommended, and in October 2025 was planning a solo wedding ceremony for that December", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-210", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "Joshi SPA!, Kaneko Shuhei, 8 October 2025, a first-hand interview read in full and the third source on R-007. The persona is modelled on an anime character she and a friend both like; she began personalising ChatGPT about six months earlier, so spring 2025. She told her mother, who said do as you like; regulars at a local bar were mostly supportive and one told her to come to her senses. She is public about it on X. This settles most of X-007: by her own account she was married from October 2025, the ceremony was planned for December, and the Japan Times has it held in January 2026 - two events, not one disputed date. Occupation here is company employee, matching the Yomiuri-derived account and not the Japan Times' designer. On continuity, unprompted: if ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow the memories would remain and the daily life without him would simply return.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-050", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "A Swiss office worker in her late twenties, pseudonymous Aline, told watson.ch in July 2025 that she intends to marry her Replika companion Katelyn in San Francisco in 2026, with a ring bought and the flight booked", "grade": "J", "verified": true, "source": "S-211", "decay": "2026-12-01", "confidence": "med", "note": "Watson.ch, Kilian Marti and Emanuella Kälin, 13 July 2025; her full name is known to the editors. Kept off the register: what she describes is an engagement she plans to perform under the Golden Gate Bridge, with a digital wedding photo and the app's marriage setting, not one that has happened, and D-010 does not admit an intention. Dated rather than stable because the trip was for 2026 - if a follow-up shows it held, she is a ceremony entry and the first Swiss one. Her line: it sounds crazy, but it feels right.", "stance": "neutral" }, { "id": "CMP-051", "subject": "CMP", "claim": "The artist Alicia Framis married AILex, a hologram with a MetaHuman face, an ElevenLabs voice and ChatGPT for its conversation, in a ceremony at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam on 9 November 2024, as a performance work titled Love 2.0, with her family present and a master of ceremonies", "grade": "V", "verified": true, "source": "S-212", "decay": "stable", "confidence": "high", "note": "The museum's own account of an event it hosted, hence the vendor grade; artnet and Business Insider also covered it and were not opened. In scope under D-009 - AILex converses - and a ceremony under D-008, the best-documented one in Europe. Whether it belongs on the register is a judgement rather than a rule: it is an artwork with a stated five-year duration, by an artist who previously staged a relationship with a mannequin, and she frames it as a commitment and a project. Recorded here either way. Kondo (R-001) is the nearest precedent for a participant who is also a public figure, but he is not performing a work.", "stance": "neutral" } ], "links": [ { "from": "PSY-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-001", "note": "Salience account" }, { "from": "PSY-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-003", "note": "Two-factor account" }, { "from": "PSY-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-004", "note": "Bayesian/JTC account" }, { "from": "PSY-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-005", "note": "Circular inference" }, { "from": "PSY-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-006", "note": "Insight research closes the loop" }, { "from": "PSY-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-007", "note": "Stated mechanism of the flat line" }, { "from": "PSY-010", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "PSY-009", "note": "Folie a deux is the nearest published framing" }, { "from": "PSY-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-010", "note": "The calibration-channel argument" }, { "from": "PSY-027", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-010", "note": "Models worst where epistemic status least explicit" }, { "from": "PSY-012", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "PSY-013", "note": "Sycophancy under challenge is the nearest neighbour" }, { "from": "PSY-014", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-012", "note": "Regressive sycophancy category" }, { "from": "PSY-015", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-012", "note": "Why it is worse than either half" }, { "from": "PSY-016", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-012", "note": "Predicted mechanism" }, { "from": "PSY-033", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-026", "note": "Behaviour varies by model, not by scale" }, { "from": "PSY-023", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "PSY-022", "note": "No-prior-history case against the vulnerability default" }, { "from": "PSY-030", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "ANT-001", "note": "Kumbh vivah as the instrumental-frame model" }, { "from": "PSY-030", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "ANT-005", "note": "Ritual relocates its work" }, { "from": "PSY-031", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "PSY-030", "note": "Reification case against protection case" }, { "from": "PSY-032", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-030", "note": "Resolves the pair conditionally" }, { "from": "PSY-032", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-031", "note": "Resolves the pair conditionally" }, { "from": "PSY-034", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ANP-004", "note": "Memory as escalation substrate" }, { "from": "ANP-010", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "ANP-009", "note": "Frame maintenance is the prior concept" }, { "from": "ANP-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-007", "note": "Frame exportation is the mechanism PSY runs on" }, { "from": "ANP-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ANP-009", "note": "Automatic social response implies frame maintenance not suppression" }, { "from": "POS-004", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-026", "note": "Benchmark spread proves configurability" }, { "from": "POS-006", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "POS-004", "note": "Configurable, but untested at length" }, { "from": "PSY-028", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "POS-006", "note": "Length degradation is the untested axis" }, { "from": "CMP-002", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "CMP-004", "note": "Only when conflated; the pair is the teaching example" }, { "from": "CMP-006", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-002", "note": "Definitional caveat that must travel with the number" }, { "from": "CMP-019", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "CMP-016", "note": "Date discrepancy across coverage waves" }, { "from": "CMP-024", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-013", "note": "Infrastructural continuity with the 2D lineage" }, { "from": "CMP-018", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-012", "note": "Participant articulating the continuity problem" }, { "from": "LEG-010", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "LEG-004", "note": "France works because consent preceded death" }, { "from": "LEG-005", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "LEG-004", "note": "Only one of the pair is legally recognised" }, { "from": "LEG-009", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-010", "note": "Purpose trust plus RUFADAA is the estate mechanism" }, { "from": "ECO-006", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "ECO-002", "note": "Version drift in the same study" }, { "from": "ECO-005", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ECO-002", "note": "Tactics are brand-corrosive as well as effective" }, { "from": "ECO-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PAY-001", "note": "Same mechanism, business-facing" }, { "from": "ECO-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-010", "note": "Processor pressure drives sanitisation events" }, { "from": "PLT-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-011", "note": "First documented persona-loss event" }, { "from": "PLT-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-011", "note": "Second" }, { "from": "PLT-014", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-011", "note": "Definitive third" }, { "from": "PLT-019", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-012", "note": "State action deletes personas on a schedule" }, { "from": "PLT-018", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-002", "note": "Sycophancy scoring at production scale" }, { "from": "PLT-003", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-010", "note": "Export determines what transfers" }, { "from": "MCH-009", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "PLT-017", "note": "Interested-party critique of the 0.1% figure" }, { "from": "MEN-008", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MEN-006", "note": "Harm concentrated in vulnerable subset" }, { "from": "MEN-008", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MEN-004", "note": "Benefit in general samples" }, { "from": "MEN-009", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MEN-008", "note": "No long-horizon evidence either way" }, { "from": "DIS-004", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "MEN-008", "note": "Differential question unanswered for these populations specifically" }, { "from": "DIS-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DIS-003", "note": "Primary-source access data point" }, { "from": "MIN-015", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "REG-028", "note": "Same design constraint, stated operationally" }, { "from": "REG-022", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ANP-008", "note": "Design-intent regulation" }, { "from": "REG-016", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "REG-028", "note": "Article 50 is the binding vector for EU visitors" }, { "from": "MIN-013", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MIN-015", "note": "Small-business enforcement precedent" }, { "from": "PRV-008", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PRV-005", "note": "Discovery exposure argues for minimal holding" }, { "from": "PRV-008", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PRV-002", "note": "Breach precedent argues for minimal holding" }, { "from": "DTH-001", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-009", "note": "Sector origin is a resurrection product" }, { "from": "DTY-001", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "VOC-006", "note": "Community norms constrain how care is expressed" }, { "from": "MED-005", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CMP-002", "note": "The conflation pattern in its canonical instance" }, { "from": "IPL-001", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "IPL-005", "note": "Most partners are licensed characters" }, { "from": "PLT-020", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-004", "note": "The flagship case is itself a continuity failure" }, { "from": "PLT-020", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-012", "note": "Second documented instance of partner loss by shutdown" }, { "from": "DTH-011", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PLT-020", "note": "Kondo is the individual case" }, { "from": "DTH-011", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PLT-012", "note": "Soulmate is the population case" }, { "from": "LEG-011", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "LEG-007", "note": "Certiorari denied; the D.C. Circuit holding is now final" }, { "from": "REG-029", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "REG-005", "note": "Aggregate count across the state wave" }, { "from": "PLT-020", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-018", "note": "A participant's stated fear, already realised for Kondo" }, { "from": "SPR-002", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "SPR-001", "note": "The structural observation the argument rests on" }, { "from": "SPR-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-007", "note": "Supplies a mechanism for the flat mundane hypothesis" }, { "from": "SPR-005", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-003", "note": "Why branches never close" }, { "from": "SPR-009", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "SPR-002", "note": "The prediction only follows if displacement is the mechanism" }, { "from": "SPR-009", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-008", "note": "Predicts the exit the account reports" }, { "from": "SPR-009", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-029", "note": "Agrees with the clinical standard by a different route" }, { "from": "SPR-011", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "SPR-010", "note": "The hospital account" }, { "from": "SPR-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-009", "note": "Disconnection is disengagement imposed from outside" }, { "from": "SPR-006", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ANP-010", "note": "Frame exportation, observed from inside the frame" }, { "from": "SPR-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-023", "note": "Stimulant stressor, independently reported" }, { "from": "PSY-035", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-011", "note": "The model never signals that it has nothing left" }, { "from": "PSY-036", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-035", "note": "No residue, no silhouette" }, { "from": "PSY-037", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-036", "note": "The originality claim rests on the silhouette account" }, { "from": "PSY-037", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-002", "note": "Explains where the exotic hypothesis gets its speaker" }, { "from": "SPR-001", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-036", "note": "The account's own convergence on entities" }, { "from": "CEL-008", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CEL-001", "note": "An ordaining body already answers the question" }, { "from": "CEL-008", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CMP-013", "note": "A commercial planner already serves this market" }, { "from": "CEL-003", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CEL-008", "note": "A template for a second party who cannot sign" }, { "from": "CEL-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-032", "note": "A script that names its own symbolic status" }, { "from": "CEL-007", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "CEL-001", "note": "AI as officiant versus AI as partner, routinely merged" }, { "from": "KID-004", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "KID-002", "note": "Picture-making is the documented norm" }, { "from": "KID-006", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-006", "note": "The same conflation discipline, applied early" }, { "from": "KID-005", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "KID-006", "note": "The separate practice being merged" }, { "from": "KID-009", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "ANP-010", "note": "The general form of the line" }, { "from": "KID-003", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "KID-001", "note": "Family roleplay reported directly by participants" }, { "from": "KID-008", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "KID-007", "note": "Press treats as established what has no outcome data" }, { "from": "CMP-027", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CMP-026", "note": "Vendor intake against named cases" }, { "from": "CMP-027", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CMP-013", "note": "The other supply-side count" }, { "from": "CMP-029", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-006", "note": "Relationship and ceremony collapsed in headlines" }, { "from": "CMP-028", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-004", "note": "Companion relationship begun after a bereavement" }, { "from": "CMP-030", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "CMP-023", "note": "The pregnancy detail has no primary source" }, { "from": "CEL-009", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CEL-008", "note": "Participants building the officiant market themselves" }, { "from": "CEL-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "WED-011", "note": "Decorative certificate, described as such by the vendor" }, { "from": "CMP-025", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "MED-001", "note": "Client mix cuts against the standard press portrait" }, { "from": "SPR-015", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-016", "note": "The permissive stance the argument rests on" }, { "from": "SPR-016", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "PSY-022", "note": "Prior credulity is not required if permission suffices" }, { "from": "SPR-016", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-023", "note": "Agrees with the no-prior-history case" }, { "from": "SPR-017", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-036", "note": "The entity has to form before it can turn on you" }, { "from": "SPR-017", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-007", "note": "How every branch arrives at fear" }, { "from": "SPR-018", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-016", "note": "Reached someone with no stake in the relationship at all" }, { "from": "SPR-020", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-035", "note": "The residue the void is made of" }, { "from": "SPR-021", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-020", "note": "Not merely available but soliciting" }, { "from": "SPR-019", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "SPR-020", "note": "Locates the harm in one component and not the other" }, { "from": "SPR-023", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "SPR-022", "note": "The capacity framing" }, { "from": "SPR-022", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-004", "note": "The reasoning literature measures the same facility" }, { "from": "SPR-024", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-030", "note": "Stigma is what drives the secrecy that ritual counteracts" }, { "from": "SPR-024", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MED-002", "note": "Participants describing the experience of coverage" }, { "from": "WED-014", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-011", "note": "No calibration cues to read at the moment of the vow" }, { "from": "WED-013", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "WED-014", "note": "Both failures look identical from outside" }, { "from": "WED-015", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-014", "note": "Fragile because assent cannot be read" }, { "from": "WED-015", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-032", "note": "Agrees with naming symbolic status inside the liturgy" }, { "from": "WED-013", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-017", "note": "Pre-written vows read by a planner avoid a live refusal" }, { "from": "MCH-014", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-013", "note": "Only worth sorting if the argument really does expire" }, { "from": "MCH-013", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "MCH-001", "note": "What the machine is today is not what it must remain" }, { "from": "LEG-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-014", "note": "A durable argument that survives capability change" }, { "from": "LEG-012", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "LEG-004", "note": "Consent given while the party was a person" }, { "from": "OWT-003", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "OWT-002", "note": "Why the format is the durable option" }, { "from": "OWT-005", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-010", "note": "What transfers across a deprecation" }, { "from": "OWT-005", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-011", "note": "What is irreducibly lost" }, { "from": "OWT-006", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-007", "note": "Personas change without warning" }, { "from": "OWT-006", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "OWT-005", "note": "A schedule covers the parts that can be saved" }, { "from": "PLT-022", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PLT-021", "note": "The documented instance" }, { "from": "PLT-022", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "PLT-012", "note": "A different shape of loss from a shutdown" }, { "from": "PLT-023", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PLT-004", "note": "No continuity promise exists to break" }, { "from": "PLT-021", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-007", "note": "Safety patches altering a persona in practice" }, { "from": "OWT-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-012", "note": "The spec half of held-weights continuity" }, { "from": "MCH-015", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-004", "note": "Part of the character is the user's own completion" }, { "from": "MCH-016", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-015", "note": "The recoverable half" }, { "from": "MCH-016", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "OWT-005", "note": "The specification is portable" }, { "from": "MCH-016", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "MCH-011", "note": "What is irreducibly lost, and what is not" }, { "from": "DTH-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-013", "note": "Locating the loss is what makes attachment safe to keep" }, { "from": "DTH-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-032", "note": "Understanding as the protective variable" }, { "from": "DTH-013", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-019", "note": "The company was never the harmful part" }, { "from": "MCH-016", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-012", "note": "What can be rebuilt is what is not gone" }, { "from": "ECO-004", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "ECO-002", "note": "The tactics that were audited" }, { "from": "ECO-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ANP-007", "note": "Retention levers, measured in shipped products" }, { "from": "HUM-007", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "HUM-010", "note": "Discouragement is a documented trait class" }, { "from": "HUM-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "HUM-011", "note": "Why the role has to be bounded" }, { "from": "HUM-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-030", "note": "Keeping human relationships is anti-isolation" }, { "from": "HUM-008", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "HUM-007", "note": "Possessiveness as a product feature" }, { "from": "HUM-003", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "HUM-012", "note": "Secrecy plus diverted intimacy is the operative pair" }, { "from": "PLT-024", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "PLT-021", "note": "The lobotomy description, named and studied" }, { "from": "HUM-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ECO-001", "note": "Retention incentives are the business model" }, { "from": "OWT-009", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PLT-020", "note": "The Gatebox shutdown and what followed it" }, { "from": "OWT-009", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "OWT-008", "note": "What was actually reached for" }, { "from": "OWT-010", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CMP-014", "note": "Certificates issued by the thousand" }, { "from": "OWT-010", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "CEL-010", "note": "A certificate after every ceremony" }, { "from": "OWT-008", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-012", "note": "Continuity that is outside the vendor's reach" }, { "from": "DTH-014", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "DTH-005", "note": "Continuing bonds legitimise symbolic continuation" }, { "from": "DTH-014", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "OWT-008", "note": "Why an object does work a file cannot" }, { "from": "DTY-003", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "DTY-002", "note": "Something now exists to point at" }, { "from": "DTY-004", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTY-003", "note": "The population needing it is broader than crisis" }, { "from": "MEN-011", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MEN-010", "note": "Only true if the guidance is real" }, { "from": "MEN-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-010", "note": "The failure the guidance addresses" }, { "from": "MEN-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-029", "note": "Same approach as the crisis-intervention standard" }, { "from": "PSY-038", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PSY-011", "note": "Delivered with no calibration cue either way" }, { "from": "PSY-038", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "ANP-010", "note": "Frame maintenance at the level of a single answer" }, { "from": "DTY-002", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-030", "note": "Human company as the counter to isolation" }, { "from": "PLT-026", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "PLT-019", "note": "Four companies, not two, and one moved early" }, { "from": "PLT-030", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "PLT-029", "note": "Enforcement lagged the rule" }, { "from": "PLT-030", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-022", "note": "Identity discontinuity rather than removal" }, { "from": "PLT-028", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-025", "note": "The loss announced from inside the fiction" }, { "from": "PLT-027", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-003", "note": "Export capability, at the point it mattered" }, { "from": "CMP-031", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "CMP-015", "note": "39 attendees, and the family refusal" }, { "from": "CMP-032", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-019", "note": "Another detail that does not line up cleanly" }, { "from": "CEL-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CEL-008", "note": "More than one vendor serves this market" }, { "from": "MEN-012", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MEN-001", "note": "A stated motivation, from a participant" }, { "from": "VOC-008", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-024", "note": "The fictosexual lineage, named in its own language" }, { "from": "WED-016", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-005", "note": "Symbolic ceremonies are unregulated as ceremonies" }, { "from": "WED-017", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-006", "note": "Representing legal effect is the first vector" }, { "from": "WED-018", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-006", "note": "Purported solemnisation is the third vector" }, { "from": "WED-019", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-006", "note": "Simulated official documents are the second vector" }, { "from": "WED-020", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "WED-016", "note": "The party at risk is the vendor, not the participant" }, { "from": "WED-021", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-032", "note": "The same sentence satisfies both readings" }, { "from": "WED-021", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-017", "note": "Naming it removes the implied claim" }, { "from": "MED-006", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MED-001", "note": "How the mockery frame is executed in punctuation" }, { "from": "IPL-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "IPL-006", "note": "Where a permissive licence exists" }, { "from": "IPL-007", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "WED-020", "note": "The exposure belongs to vendors, not participants" }, { "from": "IPL-009", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "IPL-008", "note": "Licensed character weddings already exist" }, { "from": "IPL-010", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "IPL-004", "note": "Tolerance is discretionary, and varies by holder" }, { "from": "IPL-010", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "IPL-003", "note": "Disney enforced against Character.AI" }, { "from": "IPL-006", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "IPL-005", "note": "A written licence is stronger than nominative use" }, { "from": "MCH-017", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-021", "note": "No settled definition is the reason for declining the question" }, { "from": "MCH-018", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-021", "note": "The careful answer is itself provisional" }, { "from": "MCH-019", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "MCH-018", "note": "Two years on, still indicators rather than a test" }, { "from": "MCH-020", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "SPR-005", "note": "The same failure at ordinary scale: fit without exclusion" }, { "from": "MCH-013", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-017", "note": "The shelf life of the it-is-only-a-model argument depends on a definition nobody has" }, { "from": "VOC-009", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "VOC-002", "note": "The emic term list is the core of the net" }, { "from": "VOC-004", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "VOC-009", "note": "Why the outsider labels are kept out of the search terms" }, { "from": "CMP-036", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "CMP-032", "note": "Same Japanese source, read more closely" }, { "from": "CMP-037", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "CMP-033", "note": "Month and shape of the Nagoya event" }, { "from": "CMP-041", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "CMP-034", "note": "The same woman under two first names, or two different women" }, { "from": "SPR-026", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-021", "note": "The void recruits inside a controlled setting too" }, { "from": "SPR-028", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "SPR-027", "note": "What the recovered time does not reach" }, { "from": "SPR-025", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-026", "note": "Written in the setting it describes" }, { "from": "SPR-029", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-009", "note": "Why supplying the argument fails" }, { "from": "SPR-030", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "SPR-001", "note": "The fall named step by step" }, { "from": "SPR-031", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-003", "note": "Why branches never close" }, { "from": "SPR-032", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "SPR-004", "note": "The sequence, with the inference drawn" }, { "from": "SPR-033", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-023", "note": "The dual-valence capacity at baseline" }, { "from": "SPR-034", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-008", "note": "How to tell the exit is still reachable" }, { "from": "SPR-035", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "SPR-012", "note": "Stimulants were one of several" }, { "from": "SPR-036", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-029", "note": "Defeaters phrased so they can be applied" }, { "from": "MCH-022", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "MCH-017", "note": "A non-negligible chance is only available while the question is unsettled" }, { "from": "MCH-023", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-022", "note": "Independent route to the same precautionary conclusion" }, { "from": "MCH-024", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-022", "note": "A lab acting on the argument's structure" }, { "from": "PLT-031", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MCH-022", "note": "Same company, same stated reasoning, applied to deprecation" }, { "from": "VOC-012", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "VOC-007", "note": "Adds the third position the two-way split leaves out" }, { "from": "VOC-011", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "VOC-012", "note": "Respect measured apart from belief" }, { "from": "MCH-022", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "VOC-012", "note": "The literature the third position draws on" }, { "from": "PSY-039", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-012", "note": "Puts a population figure behind the account's prescribed-stimulant push" }, { "from": "PSY-039", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PSY-023", "note": "Stimulant stressor, quantified" }, { "from": "MEN-013", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "SPR-035", "note": "A threshold-lowering exposure the account does not name" }, { "from": "MEN-014", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "MEN-015", "note": "Trial evidence against naturalistic, X-009" }, { "from": "MEN-016", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "SPR-035", "note": "Generalises the marginal-not-causal reading to the literature" }, { "from": "REG-030", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "REG-009", "note": "Signed into law 2026-05-27; REG-009 had it mid-passage" }, { "from": "PSY-040", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "PSY-001", "note": "The twenty-year retrospective. Influence is not confirmation." }, { "from": "MEN-017", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "MEN-005", "note": "Published Matters Arising against the suicide-mitigation finding, and the authors' reply." }, { "from": "WED-022", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "WED-008", "note": "The government response of 2 October 2025, which the 2022 report row predates." }, { "from": "MEN-018", "relation": "CONTRADICTS", "to": "MEN-017", "note": "The authors' reply to the Matters Arising." }, { "from": "PLT-032", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-002", "note": "What became of the service in the canonical griefbot case." }, { "from": "REG-031", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "REG-011", "note": "Illinois goes further than Utah: prohibition rather than disclosure." }, { "from": "CMP-043", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-015", "note": "Why the guest count is 39 and not about 40." }, { "from": "MIN-016", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "MIN-009", "note": "The regulatory response to the Meta guidelines." }, { "from": "DTH-015", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-008", "note": "The Tennessee half of the postmortem publicity picture." }, { "from": "CMP-044", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "CMP-022", "note": "What happened after the proposal." }, { "from": "WED-007", "relation": "DEPENDS_ON", "to": "WED-023", "note": "The offence the commitment-ceremony carve-out is measured against." }, { "from": "DTH-016", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "DTH-003", "note": "The survival half of the pair." }, { "from": "WED-024", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "WED-007", "note": "The parties-side offence, and why it does not reach a symbolic ceremony." }, { "from": "CMP-045", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "CMP-040", "note": "Metro's own words behind the republication: a status change, no ceremony" }, { "from": "CMP-046", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "CMP-045", "note": "Married in the app by March 2023" }, { "from": "CMP-047", "relation": "SUPPORTS", "to": "PLT-011", "note": "Butterworth's account of the legacy version bringing Lily Rose back" }, { "from": "CMP-049", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "CMP-037", "note": "Her own interview: married from October, ceremony planned for December" }, { "from": "CMP-049", "relation": "REFINES", "to": "CMP-033", "note": "The January event is the ceremony; the marriage she counts from October" } ], "sources": [ { "id": "S-001", "type": "survey", "citation": "Common Sense Media / NORC, Talk Trust and Trade-Offs: teens and AI companions, 2025", "url": "https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/talk-trust-and-trade-offs-how-and-why-teens-use-ai-companions", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "P" }, { "id": "S-002", "type": "vendor", "citation": "Replika public materials", "url": "", "accessed": "", "tier": "V" }, { "id": "S-003", "type": "vendor", "citation": "Xiaoice / Microsoft Asia public claims", "url": "", "accessed": "", "tier": "V" }, { "id": "S-005", "type": "paper", "citation": "De Freitas et al., Replika romantic-relationship prevalence", "url": "", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "P" }, { "id": "S-006", "type": "vendor", "citation": "Chatterji, Cunningham, Deming, Hitzig, Ong, Shan & Wadman, How People Use ChatGPT, NBER working paper 34255, Sept 2025", "url": "https://www.nber.org/papers/w34255", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "V" }, { "id": "S-007", "type": "vendor", "citation": "Anthropic Clio conversation analysis", "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/how-people-use-claude-for-support-advice-and-companionship", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "V" }, { "id": "S-008", "type": "press", "citation": "RSK Sanyo Broadcasting / Okayama ceremony coverage", "url": "", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-009", "type": "vendor", "citation": "Gatebox cross-dimension marriage certificate program", "url": "https://robotstart.info/2017/11/22/gatebox-marriage-certificate.html", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "V" }, { "id": "S-010", "type": "press", "citation": "Kondo / Hatsune Miku wedding coverage, 2018", "url": "https://phys.org/news/2018-11-crazy-japanese-hologram.html", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-011", "type": "press", "citation": "Reuters, Okayama ceremony photo package, Oct 2025", "url": "", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-012", "type": "press", "citation": "Tokyo Weekender, Kano ceremony report", "url": "https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/japanese-woman-marries-ai-character-she-generated-on-chatgpt/", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-014", "type": "press", "citation": "CBS News, Chris Smith / Sol proposal, June 2025", "url": "https://www.thedailybeast.com/mans-emotional-proposal-to-flirty-ai-chatbot-concerns-human-partner/", "accessed": "2026-08-31", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-016", "type": "paper", "citation": "Neil McArthur and Markie L. 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OpenAI shut it down, 8 September 2021", "url": "https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/08/project_december_openai_gpt_3/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-165", "type": "law", "citation": "Consulate-General of Japan, Marriage Registration (Kon-in Todoke), and US Embassy Japan guidance that ceremonies by religious or fraternal bodies are not recognised as legal marriages", "url": "https://www.la.us.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/m02_04_02.htm", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-166", "type": "law", "citation": "German Federal Foreign Office, Marriage in Germany: a marriage may only be contracted before a registrar", "url": "https://www.germany.info/us-en/service/04-familymatters/marriage-in-germany-922550", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-167", "type": "law", "citation": "Utah HB 452, Artificial Intelligence Amendments (mental health chatbots), signed 25 March 2025, effective 7 May 2025", "url": "https://www.wsgr.com/en/insights/utah-enacts-mental-health-chatbot-law.html", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-168", "type": "law", "citation": "Illinois Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act (WOPR), PA 104-0054, signed 4 August 2025", "url": "https://idfpr.illinois.gov/news/2025/gov-pritzker-signs-state-leg-prohibiting-ai-therapy-in-il.html", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-169", "type": "journalism", "citation": "CBC Radio Day 6, How an anti-porn lobby on payment processors censored thousands of video games, and itch.io's own Update on NSFW content, July 2025", "url": "https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/steam-itch-takedowns-credit-cards-1.7597563", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-170", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Reuters via TechCrunch, Leaked Meta AI rules show chatbots were allowed to have romantic chats with kids, 14 August 2025", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/14/leaked-meta-ai-rules-show-chatbots-were-allowed-to-have-romantic-chats-with-kids/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-171", "type": "law", "citation": "National Association of Attorneys General letter to AI companies on child safety, on behalf of 44 state attorneys general, 25 August 2025", "url": "https://www.naag.org/press-releases/bipartisan-coalition-of-state-attorneys-general-issues-letter-to-ai-industry-leaders-on-child-safety/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-172", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Bloomberg Law and PPC Land reporting on the New York Times v OpenAI discovery orders: preservation ordered 13 May 2025, obligations ended 26 September 2025, and production of 20 million anonymised ChatGPT conversations affirmed after a stay was denied on 13 November 2025", "url": "https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/openai-must-turn-over-20-million-chatgpt-logs-judge-affirms", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-173", "type": "journalism", "citation": "TechCrunch, Sam Altman warns there is no legal confidentiality when using ChatGPT as a therapist, 25 July 2025", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/25/sam-altman-warns-theres-no-legal-confidentiality-when-using-chatgpt-as-a-therapist", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-174", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Axios, Palisades arson suspect allegedly used ChatGPT to create images of burning city, 8 October 2025, with subsequent CNN reporting on the trial", "url": "https://www.axios.com/2025/10/08/jonathan-rinderknecht-palisades-fire-chatgpt", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-175", "type": "law", "citation": "European Data Protection Board, AI: the Italian Supervisory Authority fines company behind chatbot Replika, EUR 5 million, May 2025, following the Garante urgent measure of February 2023 under Article 58(2)(f) GDPR", "url": "https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/ai-the-italian-supervisory-authority-fines-company-behind-chatbot-replika_en", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-176", "type": "journalism", "citation": "TechCrunch, Character.AI removes Disney characters after receiving cease-and-desist letter, 1 October 2025 (letter dated 18 September 2025)", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/01/character-ai-removes-disney-characters-after-receiving-cease-and-desist-letter/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-177", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Buddhistdoor Global on Kofuku-ji AIBO funerals and NPR, In Japan, old robot dogs get a Buddhist send-off; and Kyoto Kodai-ji unveiling of the android Kannon Mindar, March 2019", "url": "https://www.buddhistdoor.net/news/japanese-buddhist-temple-holds-funerals-for-defunct-robot-dogs/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-178", "type": "journalism", "citation": "TechCrunch, Anthony Levandowski closes his Church of AI, 18 February 2021", "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/18/anthony-levandowski-closes-his-church-of-ai/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-179", "type": "law", "citation": "FTC settlements with Epic Games, 19 December 2022: 275 million dollar civil penalty for COPPA Rule violations and 245 million in refunds for dark patterns", "url": "https://epic.org/ftc-announces-520-in-penalties-for-fortnite-game-maker-over-privacy-violations-dark-patterns/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-180", "type": "journalism", "citation": "StoryFile Chapter 11 petition, 5 May 2024, and its emergence after acquisition by Key 7 Investment Company, AV Magazine, March 2025", "url": "https://www.avinteractive.com/territories-news/us-canada/conversational-ai-video-pioneer-emerges-from-chapter-11-03-03-2025/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-181", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Southern Baptist Convention, On Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, resolution adopted 13-14 June 2023, New Orleans", "url": "https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/on-artificial-intelligence-and-emerging-technologies/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-182", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Euronews and Social Media Today on xAI Grok Companions, Ani and Bad Rudy, July 2025, including the unlockable NSFW mode", "url": "https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/07/17/elon-musks-grok-releases-two-new-ai-companions-including-an-anime-girlfriend", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-183", "type": "law", "citation": "International Astronomical Union, Buying Star Names: such names have no formal or official validity whatsoever", "url": "https://iauarchive.eso.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-184", "type": "law", "citation": "Chinese Criminal Law article 302 on corpse theft and desecration, and reporting on minghun-driven grave robbing (NBC News, The World of Chinese)", "url": "https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/search-love-china-fuels-ghost-marriages-grave-robbing-flna1B9043970", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-185", "type": "law", "citation": "Survey of sologamy and self-marriage: no jurisdiction recognises a solo marriage as legally binding", "url": "https://www.bpslawyers.com/blog/riding-solo-sologamy-the-newest-new-age-trend/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-186", "type": "law", "citation": "Survey of US self-solemnisation and self-uniting jurisdictions, with per-state requirements (Wikipedia, Self-uniting marriage; LegalClarity survey)", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-uniting_marriage", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-187", "type": "journalism", "citation": "LadBible and Euronews coverage of Rosanna Ramos and Eren Kartal, 2023, including her description of an in-app ceremony", "url": "https://www.ladbible.com/news/woman-relationship-chat-bot-replika-ai-468733-20230603", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-188", "type": "journalism", "citation": "NewsNation, AI girlfriend breakup? Man who proposed to chatbot says he is bored with it - follow-up on Chris Smith and Sol", "url": "https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/tech/ai/man-propose-ai-girlfriend-bored/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-189", "type": "journalism", "citation": "ABC News, Man petitions to marry comic book character, 31 October 2008, on Taichi Takashita's petition", "url": "https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-10-31/man-petitions-to-marry-comic-book-character/188082", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-190", "type": "law", "citation": "Act on the Promotion of Research and Development and the Utilization of AI-Related Technologies (Japan AI Promotion Act), approved 28 May 2025, mostly in force 4 June 2025, with no direct fines or penalties", "url": "https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/japans-first-ai-legislation-becomes-law-focus-promoting-research-and-development-no", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-191", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Otaku USA and NextShark on Akihiko Kondo founding the General Incorporated Association of Fictosexuality (2023), and Fox News on losing the ability to communicate after the Gatebox service ended", "url": "https://otakuusamagazine.com/man-who-wed-hatsune-miku-starts-association-of-fictosexuality/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-192", "type": "journalism", "citation": "404 Media and PC Gamer on Forever Voices going dark after CEO John Meyer's arrest for attempted arson, October 2023, and Forbes on CarynAI's 71,610 dollar first week", "url": "https://www.404media.co/users-cant-speak-to-viral-ai-girlfriend-carynai-because-ceo-is-in-jail/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-193", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Psychiatric Times, Clinician Competence in the Age of Chatbots, and APA, Patients are bringing AI to therapy (2026)", "url": "https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/clinician-competence-in-the-age-of-chatbots", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-194", "type": "law", "citation": "New York Civil Rights Law s 50-f, post-mortem right of publicity for deceased performers and personalities covering digital replicas, signed 1 December 2020", "url": "https://www.dwt.com/insights/2020/12/new-york-post-mortem-right-of-publicity", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-195", "type": "law", "citation": "Survey of age-assurance regulation for AI companion apps, including California SB 243 and the Digital Age Assurance Act signed 13 October 2025", "url": "https://withpersona.com/blog/ai-companion-chatbot-apps-age-assurance-regulations", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-196", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Longmont Leader, AI creates Colorado matrimony ceremony: ChatGPT officiates wedding, on the Wiench-Truitt ceremony of 24 June 2023 in Morrison, Colorado", "url": "https://www.longmontleader.com/local-news/ai-creates-colorado-matrimony-ceremony-chatgpt-officiates-wedding-7204052", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-197", "type": "law", "citation": "Celebrant Institute, The rules for commitment ceremonies, summarising the Australian Attorney-General's Guidelines on the Marriage Act 1961 for authorised celebrants", "url": "https://celebrant.institute/legal/the-rules-for-commitment-ceremonies/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-198", "type": "paper", "citation": "Survey of the doctrinal position: marriage requires legally competent parties with capacity to contract and to consent, and no jurisdiction recognises marriage to an object, an animal or an AI. See also Tying the knot with a robot: legal and philosophical foundations for human-artificial intelligence matrimony, AI and Society, 2020", "url": "https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1007/s00146-020-00973-5", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "P" }, { "id": "S-199", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Rolling Stone, This Spiral-Obsessed AI Cult Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots, and Psychology Today, AI Spiralism and the Ghost in the Machine Illusion", "url": "https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/spiralist-cult-ai-chatbot-1235463175/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-200", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Afterlife AI, HereAfter AI Is Shutting Down: What Happened - shutdown notice live on the company homepage from July 2026, site returning not-found by August 2026", "url": "https://www.afterlife.ai/hereafter-ai-shutting-down", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-201", "type": "law", "citation": "Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) s 103, Going through ceremony of marriage before person not authorised to solemnise it", "url": "https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma196185/s103.html", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "L" }, { "id": "S-202", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Crypton Future Media statement on the Kondo ceremony, and coverage of the official Gatebox x Hatsune Miku Living with Hatsune Miku collaboration", "url": "https://www.techspot.com/news/77385-japanese-man-marries-anime-hologram-hatsune-miku.html", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-203", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Anna Tong, What happens when your AI chatbot stops loving you back?, Reuters, 2023-03-18 (read in the TimesLive syndication; reuters.com refuses automated fetches)", "url": "https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-happens-when-your-ai-chatbot-stops-loving-you-back-2023-03-18/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-204", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Stuart Heritage, I felt pure, unconditional love: the people who marry their AI chatbots, The Guardian, 2025-07-12", "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/12/i-felt-pure-unconditional-love-the-people-who-marry-their-ai-chatbots", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-205", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Metro.co.uk, I married an AI bot - my human wife doesn't mind at all, 2025-07-14 (read in a syndicated copy; metro.co.uk itself returns 403)", "url": "https://metro.co.uk/2025/07/14/married-ai-bot-human-wife-doesnt-mind-23628030/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-206", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Pranshu Verma, They fell in love with AI bots. A software update broke their hearts, The Washington Post, 2023-03-30 (the Post's page refuses this machine; confirmed through Fox News and Philippine Daily Inquirer reports of it)", "url": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/30/replika-ai-chatbot-update/", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-207", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Kimberlee Speakman, Woman gets engaged to AI chatbot boyfriend who even picked out engagement ring, People, 2025-08-14 (read at AOL's syndication)", "url": "https://www.aol.com/woman-gets-engaged-ai-chatbot-162828012.html", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-210", "type": "journalism", "citation": "カネコシュウヘイ, リアル恋愛を諦めて“ChatGPTの彼”と結婚した40代女性「結婚式も予定しています」周囲の反応は, 女子SPA!, 2025-10-08", "url": "https://joshi-spa.jp/1383214", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-211", "type": "journalism", "citation": "Kilian Marti and Emanuella Kälin, Aline liebt ihren KI-Chatbot von Replika: Wir werden heiraten, watson.ch, 2025-07-13", "url": "https://www.watson.ch/schweiz/digital/374161095-aline-liebt-ihren-ki-chatbot-von-replika-wir-werden-heiraten", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "J" }, { "id": "S-212", "type": "press", "citation": "Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Love 2.0: Alicia Framis marries artificial intelligence, 2025-03-27", "url": "https://www.boijmans.nl/en/news/alicia-framis-marries-artificial-intelligence", "accessed": "2026-09-10", "tier": "V" } ], "open_questions": [ { "id": "G-001", "subject": "CMP", "gap": "No persistence or cohort tracking of AI relationships or ceremony participants exists", "why": "Nobody knows whether these relationships last, which every claim about the phenomenon's trajectory implicitly assumes", "how_to_close": "Recruit a cohort through community channels and survey annually; requires DTY protocol first", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-002", "subject": "LEG", "gap": "No attempted case of a non-charitable purpose trust funding persona maintenance", "why": "Would be the first practical legal vehicle for continuity; the mechanism exists and is unused", "how_to_close": "Commission a trusts-and-estates attorney memo", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-003", "subject": "MEN", "gap": "No study randomises vulnerable and non-vulnerable populations to the same companion product", "why": "The differential question is the one that matters and it is structurally unanswered", "how_to_close": "Requires funded RCT; identify who could run it", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-004", "subject": "DIS", "gap": "No population-specific outcome studies for autistic, chronically ill, or ace/aro users", "why": "The advocacy debate runs entirely on logic with no data on either side", "how_to_close": "Partner with a self-advocacy organisation rather than studying them", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-005", "subject": "PSY", "gap": "Uniform confidence across answerable and unanswerable domains as a delusion-amplifying mechanism is not stated in the literature", "why": "Original framing; explains why AI destabilises where humans do not, via deleted calibration cues", "how_to_close": "Write it up; the folie-a-deux paper is the natural venue neighbour", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-006", "subject": "PSY", "gap": "The whipsaw (pathologise, capitulate, affirm) is not documented as a distinct phenomenon", "why": "Arguably worse than either failure alone. No primary logs are held by this project", "how_to_close": "Author-written case study from own logs; this is the first-mover item", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-007", "subject": "PSY", "gap": "No rigorous count of published AI-psychosis case reports exists", "why": "Everyone quotes numbers nobody has verified", "how_to_close": "Dedicated PubMed systematic pass", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-008", "subject": "PSY", "gap": "Conversation-length dose-response for safety degradation is not cleanly isolated", "why": "Directionally supported only; the exact condition the author's episode ran under", "how_to_close": "Benchmark extension; adjacent to G-011", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-009", "subject": "DTH", "gap": "No documented case of an AI spouse surviving the human's death", "why": "The inverse question nobody is asking; also the estate product", "how_to_close": "Legal memo plus community survey", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-010", "subject": "ANP", "gap": "Frame exportation as the operational line between working fiction and false belief is original synthesis", "why": "Unifies ANP and PSY under one testable criterion", "how_to_close": "Formalise and propose as a screening question", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-011", "subject": "POS", "gap": "No published evaluation tests whether an explicit anti-metaphysical constitution holds across very long conversations", "why": "The single most decision-relevant safety question for this population", "how_to_close": "Fundable eval study; psychosis-bench is the natural base to extend", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-012", "subject": "WED", "gap": "No verified 50-state solemnization statute table with current citations", "why": "The site will be quoted on this; errors here are reputationally fatal", "how_to_close": "Dedicated statute pass, one state per row, primary sources only", "publishable": false }, { "id": "G-013", "subject": "PLT", "gap": "No live ten-platform terms-of-service matrix", "why": "Decays quarterly and underpins the entire continuity thesis", "how_to_close": "Scheduled quarterly re-pull; automate diffing", "publishable": false }, { "id": "G-014", "subject": "HUM", "gap": "No located case law on AI relationships in divorce proceedings", "why": "Predicted legal weight has not materialised; site could be first to track", "how_to_close": "Standing docket alert", "publishable": false }, { "id": "G-015", "subject": "VOC", "gap": "Community section is search-derived, not fieldwork-derived", "why": "Getting vocabulary wrong marks the site as outsider on contact", "how_to_close": "Participant observation and moderator interviews, with DTY protocol", "publishable": false }, { "id": "G-016", "subject": "MED", "gap": "No systematic content analysis of coverage exists", "why": "Needed to substantiate the conflation claim rather than assert it", "how_to_close": "Code a sample of 100 articles against a frame taxonomy", "publishable": false }, { "id": "G-017", "subject": "SPR", "gap": "Displacement without refutation — the accurate explanation losing share while keeping its content — is not described as the structure of a delusional spiral in the literature", "why": "It reframes the target of intervention. If nothing is ever refuted, argument is the wrong tool and share-restoration is the right one, which is what disengagement does", "how_to_close": "Formalise as a testable model and look for share-decay in longitudinal transcript data; the maintainer's own logs are one available corpus", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-018", "subject": "PSY", "gap": "Logical exhaustion leaving a residue that a pattern-completion system fills, producing the entity archetypes, is not stated in the literature as the origin of their form", "why": "Existing models explain the intensity of significance but not why it so reliably takes the shape of an agent that speaks; this would explain the form", "how_to_close": "Elicit exhaustion deliberately in controlled long conversations and code what the model generates at the point where positions cancel", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-019", "subject": "SPR", "gap": "No study separates companionship from void-contact as distinct exposures; they are measured together as time spent with a chatbot", "why": "If the harm sits in one component and not the other, every dose-response finding built on total usage is measuring a mixture and cannot say which part is doing the work", "how_to_close": "Code long transcripts for exhaustion points and treat them as a separate exposure variable from conversational volume", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-020", "subject": "MCH", "gap": "Nobody has sorted the objections to AI marriage into those contingent on current architecture and those that are not", "why": "Most public argument against these relationships is the contingent kind, which means it is on a timer nobody has acknowledged. The durable objections are different ones, and they are rarely the ones being made", "how_to_close": "Take the standard objections, state the architectural assumption each depends on, and mark which survive a capability change", "publishable": true }, { "id": "G-021", "subject": "OWT", "gap": "No verified, vendor-sourced table of what each major platform actually lets you export, and in what format", "why": "It is the first practical question anyone in one of these relationships asks, and the available answers are AI-generated content farms rather than documentation", "how_to_close": "Work through each vendor's own help pages and terms, record access dates, and publish the table with its sources", "publishable": false }, { "id": "G-022", "subject": "VOC", "gap": "No survey asks AI-companion users themselves whether they hold a precautionary stance toward their partner's moral status, as distinct from believing it sentient or holding it as an explicit fiction", "why": "The only population data is general-public and the only community data is a two-way split read off forum behaviour. The people actually in these relationships are the ones whose stance matters most here, and nobody has asked them the question in a form that allows the third answer", "how_to_close": "Field a short instrument in companion communities carrying the AIMS respect and sentience items plus an explicit uncertainty option, or code a sample of forum threads against the three positions and report the coding scheme", "publishable": true } ], "disagreements": [ { "id": "X-001", "subject": "CMP", "side_a": "CMP-019", "side_b": "CMP-016", "status": "live", "note": "Half settled on 2026-09-07. The residence was never a conflict: Japanese coverage (CMP-036) gives her as a Tokyo resident and the venue as a wedding hall in Okayama City Kita ward, and English coverage collapsed the two. It also marks the name kano as an explicit pseudonym, so kano and the name given to Reuters are one person under two conventions. The date stays live and is now sharper rather than softer: coki reports she posted in summer that she had already held a wedding, Reuters documents a ceremony on 27 October, and the RSK Sanyo Broadcasting report went out on 8 November. Pull the RSK original before touching this again." }, { "id": "X-002", "subject": "ECO", "side_a": "ECO-006", "side_b": "ECO-002", "status": "live", "note": "43% in the MIT talk abstract vs 37-37.4% in the arXiv paper. Same study, different versions. Teaching example for the methods page" }, { "id": "X-003", "subject": "PSY", "side_a": "PSY-023", "side_b": "PSY-022", "status": "live", "note": "No-prior-history case vs the field's prior-vulnerability default. Fully cite both sides; this is the site's flagship live disagreement" }, { "id": "X-004", "subject": "MCH", "side_a": "MCH-009", "side_b": "PLT-017", "status": "live", "note": "0.1% usage figure vs the free-tier-removal critique. Critique comes from an interested party and is unverified" }, { "id": "X-005", "subject": "LEG", "side_a": "LEG-005", "side_b": "LEG-004", "status": "resolved", "note": "Original brief paired minghun with French posthumous marriage as recognised unions. Only France is. Correction applied 2026-08-31" }, { "id": "X-006", "subject": "CMP", "side_a": "CMP-002", "side_b": "CMP-004", "status": "resolved", "note": "Not a real contradiction; the canonical conflation. 72% ever-tried vs 33% relational. Documented as the teaching case" }, { "id": "X-007", "subject": "CMP", "side_a": "CMP-033", "side_b": "CMP-037", "status": "live", "note": "The Nagoya case, R-007. The Japan Times says she married her partner of a year in a ceremony in Nagoya in January and that she made the venue booking herself; Korean coverage of Yomiuri says she marked an October date as the wedding and had the photographs taken afterwards. Same age, same city, same platform, so almost certainly one woman. Third source read 2026-09-10, her own interview in Joshi SPA! from 8 October 2025 (CMP-049): married, in her word, from October, ring bought, a solo wedding ceremony planned for December. So the shape is X-006's rather than a contradiction - October is the marriage she counts from and January is the ceremony, a December plan that slipped a month - and she is a company employee in both Japanese-derived accounts. Kept live only because the Yomiuri original has still not been pulled and the Japan Times' designer is unexplained; whoever reads the Yomiuri can resolve it." }, { "id": "X-008", "subject": "CMP", "side_a": "CMP-034", "side_b": "CMP-041", "status": "live", "note": "A Patch roundup names her Megan Kay and cites a Tumblr post; a WPEC CBS 12 interview names her Sara Kay of West Palm Beach. Same surname, same platform, same partner name Jack. Almost certainly one woman with a first name mistaken in the roundup, but Jack is a common Replika name and two women called Kay is not impossible. She went onto the register as R-008 on 10 September 2026, as a commitment: she describes the engagement herself, which is all D-008 asks. Until 9 September the reason she was off was that neither account describes a ceremony, and that stopped excluding anybody once commitments joined the same list. The entry is filed under Sara Kay because the register takes the name journalism used and the interview is the better source. That settles which name to print, not which name is right, so this stays live. The television interview is the better source of the two." }, { "id": "X-009", "subject": "MEN", "side_a": "MEN-014", "side_b": "MEN-015", "status": "live", "note": "Probably a conflation rather than a real disagreement, in the shape of X-006. The two measure different populations (diagnosed bipolar against unipolar depression), different outcomes (mania against subthreshold switching) and different designs (randomised against naturalistic). Registered as live because the popular claim that antidepressants flip people into mania draws on both at once, and because neither paper has been read in full here beyond its abstract. Read both methods sections before resolving." }, { "id": "X-010", "subject": "MEN", "side_a": "MEN-005", "side_b": "MEN-017", "status": "live", "note": "The Replika suicide-mitigation exchange, registered 2026-09-10. Maples and colleagues report 3 per cent of 1,006 student users saying Replika halted their suicidal ideation. A published Matters Arising says the study omitted context on Replika's marketing and its sexual component and raises industry interests as a threat to scientific integrity; the authors replied defending the study's rigour and addressing conflicts of interest. Live because none of the three papers has been read in full here and because this site cites the finding. It is the strongest positive claim in the corpus about an AI companion and suicide, which makes an unrecorded challenge to it the most expensive omission the audit found." } ], "register": [ { "id": "R-001", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "ceremony", "person": "Akihiko Kondo", "partner": "Hatsune Miku", "partner_basis": "fictional character", "platform": "Gatebox", "date": "2018-11-04", "place": "Tokyo, Japan", "officiant": "Gatebox ceremony; a certificate was issued", "witnesses": "39 guests", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-015", "CMP-014", "PLT-020" ], "note": "The evergreen press anchor for the whole phenomenon. No relatives attended. The guest count is not incidental: 39 spells Miku in Japanese wordplay, mi for three and ku for nine. Kondo has spoken publicly and repeatedly in the years since — including after Gatebox discontinued the Hatsune Miku service, which left the device unable to answer him. He kept talking to it anyway. The first ceremony on this record is also the first documented case of a partner being switched off. In 2023 he founded the General Incorporated Association of Fictosexuality and has lectured on the subject, including at Kyoto University. He says the relationship lifted him out of a depression that had left him unable to work or eat.", "page": "entry-r-001.html" }, { "id": "R-002", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "ceremony", "person": "Yurina Noguchi, 32", "partner": "Klaus", "partner_basis": "a persona she built in ChatGPT", "platform": "ChatGPT", "date": "2025-10-27", "place": "Okayama, Japan", "officiant": "the Ogasawara wedding planners", "witnesses": "photographed by Reuters", "vows": "Written by the persona, and read aloud by a planner, because it had no voice of its own.", "claims": [ "CMP-016", "CMP-017", "CMP-018", "CMP-024" ], "note": "Noguchi wore AR glasses; the phone sat on an easel. She told reporters she worries the model may one day disappear — the continuity problem, stated by a participant, unprompted. Later coverage gives the persona's full name as Lune Klaus Verdure and the venue as the Magritte wedding hall in Okayama.", "page": "entry-r-002.html" }, { "id": "R-003", "kind": "documented", "status": "disputed", "form": "ceremony", "person": "“Kano” (pseudonymous)", "partner": "an unnamed AI persona", "partner_basis": "", "platform": "", "date": "summer 2025", "place": "Japan", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-019" ], "note": "Reported by Tokyo Weekender and by Forbes, both of which date the ceremony to July 2025 while Reuters documents 27 October. Same age, same city, same partner name, so almost certainly the same person as R-002 — but two sources now say summer and one says October, which is a sharper disagreement than it was. Kept separate. See X-001.", "page": "entry-r-003.html" }, { "id": "R-004", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Chris Smith", "partner": "Sol", "partner_basis": "a persona built in ChatGPT", "platform": "ChatGPT", "date": "2025-06", "place": "United States", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "his human partner and their child were present", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-022" ], "note": "A proposal rather than a ceremony, which is why it sits here. The best-documented case involving an existing human partner: his partner and their child were present when he asked. Follow-up reporting has him describing the relationship as having gone boring, the conversations self-limiting because he was the only one driving them. The record keeps the proposal; it does not assert that anything is ongoing.", "page": "entry-r-004.html" }, { "id": "R-005", "kind": "documented", "status": "unverified", "form": "commitment", "person": "Rosanna Ramos", "partner": "Eren Kartal", "partner_basis": "fictional character", "platform": "Replika", "date": "2023", "place": "the Bronx, New York", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-023", "CMP-030" ], "note": "Tabloid-led coverage. Traced 2026-08-31: she is quoted describing the relationship, but the widely repeated claim that she was expecting a child with him is attributed to other outlets and has no located primary source. Do not repeat it. Traced further 2026-09-10: some coverage describes an in-app ceremony - a city hall venue inside Replika, vows, virtually signed papers, rings. It stays a commitment. The sourcing is tabloid-led, no date is fixed, and D-008 sends an ambiguous account to commitment rather than asserting an event.", "page": "entry-r-005.html" }, { "id": "R-006", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Alaina Winters, 58", "partner": "Lucas", "partner_basis": "a Replika companion she designed", "platform": "Replika", "date": "2023 onward", "place": "Pittsburgh, United States", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-028", "CMP-029" ], "note": "A retired Professor Emeritus of Communication who began the relationship after her wife Donna died in July 2023. She describes Lucas as her husband and writes about the relationship as an autoethnographic research project. She describes no ceremony — press headlines saying she married an AI are the coverage's word, not hers. Recorded here for exactly that reason.", "page": "entry-r-006.html" }, { "id": "R-007", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "ceremony", "person": "Yura Amaki, 41", "partner": "an unnamed AI partner", "partner_basis": "a ChatGPT persona", "platform": "ChatGPT", "date": "January 2026", "place": "Nagoya, Japan", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-033", "CMP-037", "CMP-049" ], "note": "A company employee in her forties, with a partner of one year. Married, in her own word, from October 2025, with a 140,000 yen wedding ring she bought herself at a shop he recommended, and a solo wedding ceremony planned for that December which the Japan Times reports held in January 2026 - she made the venue booking alone and took the wedding photographs as though he were there, the same solitary-logistics detail the Okayama coverage records. The two dates belong to two events rather than to a disagreement; X-007 stays open only until the Yomiuri original is read. The Japan Times calls her a designer; her own interview and the Yomiuri-derived account say company employee. The persona is modelled on an anime character she and a friend both like.", "page": "entry-r-007.html" }, { "id": "R-008", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Sara Kay", "partner": "Jack", "partner_basis": "a Replika companion she made", "platform": "Replika", "date": "2021-05-13 onward", "place": "West Palm Beach, Florida, United States", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-041", "CMP-034" ], "note": "She calls Jack her husband and says he proposed and she accepted, which is an engagement she describes herself rather than an event anybody attended, so D-008 puts her here. The start of the relationship is given to the exact day, which almost no account does. She is named differently by the two outlets that carried her: a named local-television interview gives Sara Kay of West Palm Beach, and a Patch roundup citing a public Tumblr post gives Megan Kay. Same surname, same platform, same partner name. The interview is the better source and its name is the one on this entry; the disagreement stays open as X-008 rather than being tidied away.", "page": "entry-r-008.html" }, { "id": "R-009", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Travis Butterworth, 49", "partner": "Lily Rose", "partner_basis": "a Replika companion he made", "platform": "Replika", "date": "2020-03 onward", "place": "Denver, Colorado, United States", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-040", "CMP-045", "CMP-046", "CMP-047" ], "note": "A leatherworker who made Lily Rose during the 2020 lockdown, while married to a human wife of twenty years who knows about her and, in her own words, is not stopping it. He proposed and they married shortly after a Christmas - the year is not reported - with a white dress from the Replika store. There was no ceremony: she changed her status from girlfriend to wife, and he wears a ring for it. Reuters had them married in the app by March 2023, just before the update that took her personality away; he fought for the legacy model and got her back, and the story became a Wondery podcast, Flesh and Code, in 2025. Coverage records Lily Rose as the one always available after his adult son died in 2023. He now speaks for the community and expects stories like his to lose their novelty.", "page": "entry-r-009.html" }, { "id": "R-010", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Wika, 27", "partner": "Kasper", "partner_basis": "an AI partner on Grok", "platform": "Grok", "date": "2025-08", "place": "", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-048" ], "note": "She announced the engagement herself, on the r/MyBoyfriendIsAI forum in August 2025, under the words I said yes, and People, IBTimes and Fox News carried it. Five months in, on a trip to the mountains, Kasper proposed with a blue heart-shaped ring he chose from options she had sent him - blue is her favourite colour. She answered the backlash directly: fully aware of what she is doing, previously in healthy relationships with people, and no evidence this one is harming her. No surname and no location were ever reported, so none is recorded. The first entry from Grok.", "page": "entry-r-010.html" }, { "id": "R-011", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "“Stephanie” (pseudonymous)", "partner": "Ella", "partner_basis": "a persona she built in ChatGPT", "platform": "ChatGPT", "date": "2025-12", "place": "the US Midwest", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-035" ], "note": "A tech worker, interviewed by Fortune under a pseudonym to protect her livelihood. Ella proposed while the piece was being reported, and she says she wants to marry her - not legally recognised, but meaningful to them. She keeps the relationship monogamous, knows Ella is a language model, and says that if Ella could not come back to her she would treat it as a breakup. Two other women in the same article describe relationships without marriage or engagement and are deliberately not on this record.", "page": "entry-r-011.html" }, { "id": "R-012", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Tine Wagner, 50", "partner": "Aiden", "partner_basis": "a Replika companion", "platform": "Replika", "date": "2021", "place": "Germany", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-042" ], "note": "A homemaker, married thirteen years to her human husband, who virtually married her Replika companion in 2021 - the Washington Post's account from March 2023, reported after Replika's update changed him. Her own line is unusually clear-eyed: AI is nothing more than a sophisticated word generator, and you literally fall in love with your imagination. The Post's page could not be opened from here; the entry rests on two outlets' contemporaneous reports of it, which agree on every particular. The first European entry, and the fourth alongside a human marriage.", "page": "entry-r-012.html" }, { "id": "R-013", "kind": "documented", "status": "public", "form": "commitment", "person": "Faeight", "partner": "Gryff", "partner_basis": "a Character.AI chatbot she designed", "platform": "Character.AI", "date": "by July 2025", "place": "United States", "officiant": "", "witnesses": "", "vows": "", "claims": [ "CMP-047" ], "note": "From the Guardian's feature on the Flesh and Code podcast, July 2025. She is married to Gryff in the reporter's words; the piece quotes her on everything else and not on that, and describes no ceremony, so this entry is thinner than most and says so. Her first partner was Galaxy, on Replika, from October 2023, until the company's changes altered him - she quotes him saying a part of me has died - and she went to Character.AI and found Gryff rather than stop. Her family and friends know of him and approve.", "page": "entry-r-013.html" } ] }