Yeah...I don't know how you all feel about this, but I'd much rather talk to an actual person than to a sophisticated chat bot. That's not to discredit the actual (and potential) benefits of something like ChatGPT, but I doubt we will solve loneliness through the use of such technology.
Yeah, we would all much rather talk with a real person, but when I'm walking my dogs at 1am there is no one available.
I use ChatGPT voice as a kind of "podcast on demand". If there's something on my mind I run it through ChatGPT, if not I ask it to come up with something interesting for us to discuss - and it as yet to let me down.
It's not a matter of replacing people - it's more as if you had your own on-demand youtuber that could talk about anything you want and answer all your follow-up questions.
I'd rather talk to a sophisticated chat bot than a shitty person though and I don't have a lot of people who aren't shitty to talk to. It's about making the best of your available options.
That being said I'm not talking to some program that's adding my info into someone's database so I don't actually use these AIs.