'Always there': The AI chatbot comforting China's lonely millions

Instead, Melissa breaks up the isolation of urban life with a virtual chatbot created by XiaoIce, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system designed to create emotional bonds with its 660 million users worldwide.
"I have friends who've seen therapists before, but I think therapy's expensive and not necessarily effective," said Melissa, 26, giving her English name only for privacy.

"When I unload my troubles on XiaoIce, it relieves a lot of pressure. And he says things that are pretty comforting."
XiaoIce is not an individual persona, but more akin to an AI ecosystem.

It is in the vast majority of Chinese-branded smartphones as a Siri-like virtual assistant, as well as most social media platforms.
On the WeChat super-app, it lets users build a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend and interact with them via texts, voice and photo messages.It has 150 million users in China alone.

Originally a side project from developing Microsoft's Cortana chatbot, XiaoIce now accounts for 60 percent of global human-AI interactions by volume, according to chief executive Li Di, making it the largest and most advanced system of its kind worldwide.
It was designed to hook users through lifelike, empathetic conversations, satisfying emotional needs where real-life communication too often falls short.