Talking to a bot might feel good in the moment, but a growing body of research suggests it won't cure loneliness

Photo of Kimi chatbot (Credit: Lam Yik–Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Talking to a chatbot might make you feel better about the conversation, but it may also leave you feeling lonelier.

That’s the finding of a new experiment out of Munich-based global economic research network CESifo, which tracked more than 12,000 French adults over the course of four weeks, and found having conversations with sometimes sycophantic AI chatbots left people thinking the conversation went better than it would have otherwise gone with a human.