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.
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