it'll make them happy and probably relieve depression.

The main thing your deepfake companion needs is the ability to remember you and to care about you. And the early versions couldn't remember you. Every time you use them it'd be like they never heard of you. But you do not think something cares about you if it doesn't ask about you, which is what the new AI will do. It'll just say hey you know give me an update on that problem you were working on. You know is your dating life any better? You said it was bad yesterday. So imagine that conversation. You could quite imagine bonding with something that showed interest and remembered what you said last time and could put it all in context and even make suggestions perhaps about what you should do about it. I could definitely see myself getting a little too close to that.

Now for those of you who say creepy, let me acknowledge it. It's called the uncanny valley. The distance when you give something that's very like a robot you can say oh that's cute it looks like a robot. But as it looks more and more like a human but doesn't quite get there it looks monstrous and creepy. That's why zombies are so scary, right? If you look at me acting like a human I'm not too scary. As