Julian De Freitas. Photo by Grace DuVal Science & Tech Chatbot attachment issues When AI companions get a personality update, some users respond with grief, study finds Sy Boles Harvard Staff Writer September 18, 2026 4 min read Mourning the loss of somebody you care about is common after a breakup, divorce, or death. But in an era of growing reliance on AI for companionship, loss comes in a new form: the model update. In a paper in Nature Human Behavior, Julian De Freitas, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, found that some people who engaged with social robots reported feeling closer to those companions than to most people, and experienced their loss ...