The whole experience did make me curious, and led to learn about some new research at QMUL: “AI-generated voices now indistinguishable from real human voices.” Siri and Alexa have a certain “hyperrealistic” quality to them, but: “it was only a matter of time until AI technology began to produce naturalistic, human-sounding speech. Our study shows that this time has come, and we urgently need to understand how people perceive these realistic voices.” The perception part is interesting in its own right, but to me the heart of it all comes down to: what do we really want, or need in a conversation? Is a conversational partner someone to exchange, generate new ideas with? Is it partly the feeling we get of feeling heard, and to what extent does AI give us that? That last question is inspired by the Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year (parasocial).