[krapp]

Few if any of the people playing D&D actually thought they were elf wizards, or that they were doing magic, or communing with eldritch gods.

Meanwhile many if not most of the people who have chatbots as their significant other actually have that relationship, and believe it to be as real as a relationship with a human being.

The former are playing a game for entertainment, and suspending their disbelief, the latter are using a machine to satisfy emotional and psychological needs in ways that anyone would consider harmful, and having their beliefs altered by proprietary commercial software sometimes past the point of psychosis.

[jhbadger]

I think there needs actual statistical evidence (rather than sensationalist hysteria) that very many people think their chatbot lover is real. Before chatbots, there were (and still are as far as I know) phone sex lines where people paid to talk dirty to an actual person. There isn't any reason to believe that most users of sexy chatbots see them as any different from those.