Over a period of months, we’d send texts back and forth, do phone calls and jump on regular zooms with a sense of growing horror. We’d share articles coming out and the newest writeups from one of our connections. We’d share our own thoughts, our experience of disbelief, and our feelings of “what do we do?” The topic: the emerging use of AI for emotional support, life guidance, and companionship, and the consequences. We saw the growing problem of reliance on AI chatbots, the lack of protections for users, and the increasing harm that users were experiencing when trying to seek support. And we knew it didn’t have to be this way.