AI chatbots can be good for, like, therapy, if you are reasonably self aware. You can talk about your feelings, your life circumstances, and the chatbot can make some fairly generic suggestions or ask some fairly generic followup questions, and these can help you reflect and come up with your own solutions - kind of like playing with Tarot cards or something. Or they might help you roleplay some kind of event or situation, and that can be helpful.

But anyone saying that a chatbot is anything like an actual romantic partner is either lying for sensationalist hype or, quite frankly, insane. I don’t know about the specific chatbots in the article, but every chatbot I’ve talked to is very clearly a chatbot. If not immediately, then after a couple dozen messages. They forget things. They repeat themselves. Everything they “do” is a trope in the genre of fiction they inhabit. They can be fun to fuck around with - its a decent way to make personalized porn. But as an actual companion - no. This does not exist.