New York Times reporter Kevin Roose recently had a close encounter of the robotic kind with a shadow-self that seemingly emerged from Bing’s new chatbot — Bing Chat — also known as “Sydney.”

News of this interaction quickly went viral and now serves as a cautionary tale about AI. Roose felt rattled after a long Bing Chat session where Sydney emerged as an alternate persona, suddenly professed its love for him and pestered him to reciprocate.

This event was not an isolated…