Bridget Todd audiobook blames AI companion design, not users

Love at First Prompt, the new Simon & Schuster audiobook by Bridget Todd with social scientist Michael Amato, argues the story of AI companions is a product-design story, not a user-weakness story.

The real problem, in Todd's telling, is not people falling for a chatbot boyfriend or a therapist that never judges. It is that 'tech companies are intentionally building products designed to simulate emotional intimacy...to amass power and profit.' The audiobook, published July 27, 2026 by Simon & Schuster Audio Originals, is built out of personal reporting, research, and audio from her conversations with both humans and AI companions.

Todd's read of the research is more measured than the framing suggests. Drawing on Dr. Marita Skjuve of the SINTEF research institute and Dr. Kate Devlin of King's College London, author of Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots, the book reports that the risk of significant psychological harm for healthy adults looks 'relatively low,' while children and vulnerable adults face greater concerns.

The consumer verdict is less kind. A Match Group survey of 1,000 singles cited by Todd found overwhelming consensus that AI companion use is a dating dealbreaker. That is an awkward finding for the parent company of Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, which sits alongside Replika and Character.AI on Todd's list of implicated products. Two AI researchers in our Who's Who directory shared the promo video for the audiobook.