Whiplash! 🥴

Gear up for a wild ride when it comes to AI companions/chatbots. This week there was groundbreaking legislation signed aiming to make chatbots safer. A day later, OpenAI announces “erotic mode” is coming in December.

Background: As a reminder, AI companions are conversational AI systems/chatbots designed to simulate personal, emotionally aware interactions rather than just perform tasks or answer questions. Popular AI companion apps include dedicated ones like Character and Replika, but also ChatGPT, Xai, Snap AI, Meta AI, Gemini, and other big chatbots can also fall into this category. AI companionship is a massive market opportunity (projected at $1T by 2030) - but also a risky one given how little we know yet about the emotional and psychological impacts of AI intimacy - especially with younger and/or vulnerable people.

What does the law say: California's new law requires AI chatbots to implement safety protocols for users discussing self-harm and to clearly disclose that they are not human. It also establishes specific protections for minors, such as age verification, preventing exposure to sexually explicit content, and break reminders every 3 hours.

ChatGPT “mature” mode: the next day, Sam Altman announced an upcoming “mature mode” that will allow verified adults to have mature and erotic conversations if they want (closely mirroring features recently unveiled by xAI’s Grok).

My thoughts: we all know how smart kids are at finding workarounds for age and content restrictions. OpenAI and others had better step-up when it comes to bullet-proof age verification designs to ensure teens stay safe. Moreover, I really pray humanity doesn’t abort human intimacy because of how easy and accessible AI intimacy is becoming.

Nervousness outpacing optimism

The AI wave is here, but the world isn't fully excited about it. Pew Research just released new results from a survey of over 28,000 adults across 25 countries on AI sentiment revealing surprising divides - notably, countries with the most AI exposure often have the deepest anxiety about it and overall, nervousness is outpacing optimism.

Key findings:

• Half of people in the U.S., Italy, Australia, and Greece report anxiety about rising AI use, while Israel, South Korea, and Sweden show the most optimism

• The generational gap: under-35s consistently show greater AI awareness and optimism than over-50s

• When it comes to AI regulation, the EU wins the trust vote at 53% confidence, well ahead of the U.S. (37%) and China (27%)

5 “Community Norms” that could make a big difference

It’s no secret that the notion of community is not the same today as it was when we were young. We’ve become much more individualistic and anti-social, but research shows that being connected to community is essential to our health and happiness.

I stumbled upon a post this week by Chloe Sladden, a mom of 3 who is building AI tools in service of real life community. In it, she proposes 5 community “norms” that could make a big difference for families desiring a stronger sense of community. I thought they were compelling:

1. You have the phone numbers of most parents in your child’s grade: parent directories are basic community infrastructure - the “on-ramp to carpools, dinners, playdates, and advocacy.” She advocates that schools should help facilitate this because they are best positioned to do so.

2. You have another family in your home at least monthly: and in instances where this isn’t possible, you find other ways to meet up with families in person.

3. Spontaneous social plans happen at least weekly: we’ve become so scheduled, but it’s important to carve out unscheduled time that makes room for spontaneous hangouts to build friendships and community.

4. You have at least 4 non-relative families you can reach out to for help with zero anxiety: I’ll confess, I hesitated when I read this one… that bar seems high 😂! But strong community means you have a little parenting village there when you need it.

5. Care is shared across households: she argues this is the most important tenant of a healthy community. Parents are so often afraid to ask for help or even to accept offers to help, but in fact, people usually love getting the opportunity to help someone.

Curious if these resonate with you… maybe we could put forth these “norms” as little challenges to ourselves to break out of our comfort shells. 🐢

Get a jump on those hot and perfect holiday gifts

I know it’s crazy, but the holidays are around the corner. According to a new report by Adobe Analytics, which tracks over a trillion visits to retail sites, AI-powered shopping is set to surge by 520% this year. Wow, but not suprising - I bet all of us are planning to use AI to help us research holiday gifts to some extent.

Instead of just using ChatGPT or Gemini like a “fancy Google” to find good holiday gifts, you can take things a step (or few) further - including making sure you don’t miss out on any of the super hot/trending toys - by leveraging modes like “deep research” (in both Gemini and ChatGPT), or using Perplexity’s shopping mode and have AI practically do your shopping for you.

Try this prompt in ‘deep research’ mode in Gemini or ChatGPT

Housekeeper robots are getting close

This week Figure AI, a company that is building humanoid robots, announced Figure 03. The demo (linked below) is pretty wild, showcasing the robot doing chores with amazing dexterity, and Time Magazine is featuring it in their “Best Inventions of 2025.” Figure’s factory is scaling production to 12K units annually, with mass home adoption - in theory - just beyond the horizon.