My guess this is an example of a budding genre that will examine the differences between having relationships with humans albeit "artificially" enhanced vs having "relationships" with purely artificial humanoids connected to the "internet" (or whatever the enormous hive-mind of all knowledge, wisdom and calculated attempts to make us buy things will be called moving forward).

Some people will likely still prefer the former, for the foreseeable future.

I am genuinely concerned about the author's mental well-being. This is not an ad hominem attack. Based on the limited sample size of this one article, I am genuinely worried. I sincerely hope they are aware of the help available and are willing to seek it. As someone who also struggles with mental health and has recently sought help beyond medication, I have become more attuned to mental health issues in others.

I don't know, but this seems kind of a repeated argument over new technology we are not able to understand. Even cars/motorbikes were (although mainly jokingly) assumed a man's partner.

That's not to say that it is unsettling, but I just want to point out that many of the "weird" behaviours are mainly dependent on the subject (person) and not the object (smartphone/internet/socials).