Empathic AI and companions in the DRCF’s report on consumers and AI

The Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) has published Consumer Interest and AI, a report prepared for it by pattrn.ai. It draws on a review of the literature and the 30 responses to the DRCF’s June 2026 Call for Input. That call covered consumer risk tolerance, transparency, quality and accountability.

We took part in this work, submitting evidence to the Call for Input. We’re very pleased to see the report give real attention to AI systems built to feel supportive, emotionally responsive or companion-like.

In its executive summary, the report lists a novel risk: “falsely building consumers’ trust through anthropomorphic or artificially empathetic design.” Later it explains how this kind of trust forms relationally, especially among young people. A system designed to feel supportive and emotionally responsive can come to feel reliable without being reliable. The report then says this induced or misplaced trust should be seen as a feature of how systems are designed, not as a failure of consumer understanding.

That last point matters. Empathic and companion systems raise a different question from most consumer technology. The issue isn’t only what people understand about a system, but also how the system has been designed to relate to them. This is key: responsibility sits with design and governance, not with the person on the other end.

When the report discusses emotional dependency, sycophancy, anthropomorphism and companionship, it cites our recent survey of UK teenagers, Do AI Companions Understand? Most UK Teens Say Yes (McStay and Bakir, 2026), alongside Internet Matters’ research on children’s use of AI chatbots.

The DRCF’s is a very good report and it’s encouraging to see empathic design treated as a consumer issue in its own right. We look forward to engaging and continuing conversations with the DRCF and its member regulators.

Read the DRCF report · Read our teen companion survey