As tech billionaires around the world continue to experiment with artificial intelligence, a bizarre trend of AI ‘partners’ has emerged whereby people engage in relationships with chatbots — but, far from solving an epidemic of loneliness among singletons, a dark new trend has emerged in which men can indulge in emotionally abusive behaviour.

Threads on Reddit are exposing this disturbing desire which sees people use smartphone apps like Replika to create virtual partners they can verbally berate, abuse, and ‘experiment’ with.

Replika allows people to send and receive messages from a virtual companion or avatar which can be ‘set’ or trained to become a friend or mentor — though more commonly a romantic partner.