It really doesn't seem all that surprising: people form attachments like that to basically anything at the drop of a hat. It usually happens to things that move around on their own like animals or mobile robots, but it also gets done to tools and simple machines, to plants, to places, even to entirely fictional constructs that exist only within an abstract space in their head. Broadly speaking, people project spirits into things (so to speak) as something like a facet of how empathy works.

Like people become emotionally attached to robots that only move when they personally operate a control panel to move them and become distraught if those unemotive and unresponsive machines are damaged or destroyed. Now make the machine talk back in a somewhat coherent way that mimics actual interaction and life and it's going to kick that phenomenon into overdrive. If you attach a synthetic face to it it'll happen even harder.

It’s really sad… not surprising at all considering the current sociopolitical climate. In the past these people were finding niche online communities of likeminded people, which at least promoted a more healthy form of socializing. This new shift seems super dangerous and scary tho…