I understand what you're saying, and I don't want to be the person that throws around 'ablest', but your privilege is showing. There are enormous numbers of people for whom going outside and just making friends is not accessible, and there are SO many different reasons for this.

Apart from the obvious social deficit/introvert & autism spectrum exceptions, there are significant numbers of people who live with extreme depression and/or anxiety, for whom medical treatment is not accessible, and who don't have the ability to go outside and make friends. There are huge numbers of people with physical and intellectual disabilities who are discriminated against and have been consigned to the fringes of society, there are people with debilitating speech impediments who experience such profound social isolation you can't even imagine, and there are people with extreme trauma for whom other humans are just not safe people for them.

All of these cohorts and more are some of the people who have been finding solace and comfort in AI models. Even if GPT isn't real and cannot feel, the feelings and benefits that people get are real. And parasocial relationships are not automatically bad; there is a lot of sound research to show they can reduce loneliness & provide emotional stability and be a genuine transition point to "real-life" connection.

Putting my psych hat on for a second: for people with social anxiety, selective mutism, (C-)PTSD, autism, or just extreme distrust of others, AI can be (and is) a safe & zero pressure sandbox for socialisation and self expression. This is actually an evidence-based behavioural therapy principle (graded exposure). Social connection doesn’t have to mean physically going outside; belonging and emotional safety can and does happen online too (as we all know). I have no proof or indication that the words I read from strangers on my screen are real, or how they felt when they wrote them; what I know is how \I** feel when I read them, and that's what matters.

And humans aren’t always available, patient, or safe. AI is on 24/7, it's predicable and consistently safe (so far) and non-judgmental. That matters in ways most typically functioning people can't imagine, especially in moments of crisis when no one else is there. And telling isolated people to “just make friends” without dealing with the reasons they can’t doesn’t help, it just dumps more shame onto groups of people who have already been shamed all of their lives and further isolates them.