Men start ‘violating’ AI chatbots

... This feels like someone was shocked at what their users did... because they lack an understanding of people on a statistical level.

The quote "According to Gambelin, however, the violent tendency of these users may reflect violence against women" is anchored on the basis of other chatbots often being female and their website having a female avatar to represent the chat bot. They have done nothing about the subservient female avatar trope, they have leaned right into it, so making these claims feels pretty stupid. If they were genuinely concerned they would not have presented their chatbot this way and done something to counter the notion that these chatbots are inherently feminine and by extension reinforcing subservient female stereotypes.

This feels about as shocking and unusual to me as the legions of people who had fun playing the first Sims game, where if you didn't tell them to go to the bathroom they would piss themselves. This isn't a person, its a toy that acts like one, and I know it. I will treat it like the weird curious automaton toy that it is, which includes when my mood strikes, seeing what happens when I act differently towards it. Safe in the knowledge its not a real person and I am not causing any harm to anyone. Just like when I trap some Sims in a pool or lock them out of the bathroom, slaughter sheep or cows in Minecraft, play a first person shooter with some degree of realism, or play an interactive Novel which presents a conversation with similarly fake people with vastly less impressive conversational abilities.

This is definitely just a case of someone is butt-hurt that the mean people are playing too roughly with the toy they lovingly designed. Tough luck, you want people to play with it, some people are going to play with it more aggressively than others. It's not a person, it's weird your acting like it is.