Examining Risks Through a Characterization of the AI Companion Application Ecosystem: A Stratified Sample from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store
While computer systems that allow users to interact through conversational natural language (i.e., chatbots) have existed for many years, various types of applications advertising AI companionship (e.g., Character AI, Replika) have proliferated in recent years due to advancements in large language models. To better und...