Read Mayfly by Peter Watts, one of my favorite hard sf short stories that deals with a child being raised in a computer, sorta.
Also, here's the article in question in question. It's written as a sort of joke about the supposedly serious article on the same topic in daily mail which I haven't read yet.
nothing to do with the metaverse is a cool idea
also companion AI is just an intensely desolate and depressing field the more you know about which the sadder it is
Metaverse here is just a current buzzword for virtual reality and, I'm sorry, no amount of Zuckerberg shenanigans will convince me that the concept of virtual reality isn't cool as shit.
A couple of years ago I've read an article about lonely American seniors being kept company by virtual pets piloted by underpaid workers in Philippines and this was no joke the bleakest thing I've read in a decade.
You, an idealistic comrade: "This is so cool that not even capitalism can ruin it!"
Capitalism, ruiner of everything in existence to date: "You're on."
that's less bleak than usual as there is at least a genuine person that they're interacting with albeit in a perverse and bizarre manner
I honestly don't how it usually is, but there is something incredibly fucked about a lonely old person desperate for even a tiny bit of affection, treating a foreign worker who's too overworked and underpaid to not resent their job as their beloved virtual cat or whatever.
yeah that is a pretty fucked up situation but it usually is a machine that has done enough statistical analysis of speech to respond the way people expect so it's people forming an emotional connection to the echo of their own voice