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.
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