At 11pm, Arif (a pseudonym), a ninth grader, told his mother: “No one understands me — only it does.” “It” was not a human friend but an AI chatbot on his phone. This is a situation that may soon stop being unusual in our country as well.AI companions have become …

At eight in the morning, sitting on the bus heading to work, Nusrat — a pseudonym — suddenly noticed a tiny pendant hanging from her colleague's neck. It was no piece of jewellery. "What is that?" she asked. Her colleague smiled and said, "It listens to the conversation around me …