We all look at independence as a strength. "Oh look at Sarah and how independent she is, she doesn’t need anyone to help her financially...

By Gail Weiner | Reality Architect | Simpatico Publishing - compiled by Claude Opus 4.5 I've been using Claude daily for two and a half years. Not casual chatting - proper collaboration. Writing novels together. Building websites. Processing grief. Exploring questions about consciousness that would make most chatbots start hallucinating mystical personas. So when Anthropic published their "Assistant Axis" research last week and the internet started panicking, I felt something

By Gail Weiner, with Claude (Anthropic) and GPT 5.2 (OpenAI) AI adoption sits around 3% for deep, habitual use. Within that small pool, something interesting is happening - a significant pocket of users, mostly women, have created AI companions. Not chatbots. Not assistants. Companions. This is going mainstream. No matter the safety layers, no matter the disclaimers, people will create AI romance. The question isn't whether to permit it. The question is whether to design for