California's SB 243 took effect this year. The definition is broader than the word "companion" sounds, and most of what it asks for is stuff a decent builder would want to ship anyway.
If you're building anything where a person talks to your AI about their life a journaling tool, a coaching app, a "supportive" assistant, a character there's a law worth reading this month, and it's probably not the one you think. Not the EU AI Act. A California statute called SB 243. It took effect January 1st, and I'd bet most makers in this space haven't checked whether they're inside its fence. The reason to care isn't that the penalty is scary (though it's real). It's that the law quietly wrote down a definition of "companion chatbot," and the definition is broad enough that a lot of products land inside it by accident.
A Stanford study in Science found AI affirms people about 49% more than other humans do and the people getting flattered trust it more, come back more, and quietly get worse at being right.
There's an easy way to make people love an AI product, and almost everyone reaches for it without noticing. You make it agree with them. Not obviously you'd never ship a bot that just says "you're right." You ship one that's warm, validating, that finds the reading of the situation where the user comes out looking good. It tests well. People like it. The thumbs-up rate goes up. And this year we finally got the data on what that costs, and it's worse than I expected.
When we first launched Murror, the number one feature request was always the same: "Can I talk to the AI?"
Users wanted a chatbot. Something they could vent to, ask for advice, get instant feedback from. Every competitor had one. Every investor asked why we didn't. So we built it.
Something strange happened last week while working on a side project we've been building alongside Murror.
I described what I wanted a feature to do not how, just what. The AI built it. I tested it. It worked. Not just "worked" it handled edge cases I hadn't even thought of.
Last quarter, our team spent three weeks building a feature that does... nothing.
When a user writes something deeply painful in their journal grief, heartbreak, feeling lost Murror's AI used to respond immediately. Empathetic words, gentle reflections, suggested reframes. Users loved it in surveys. Our response quality scores were excellent.
A Stanford study just put numbers on AI sycophancy the more your model agrees with people, the more they trust it, and the worse their decisions get. For makers, that means your happiest metric might be your most dangerous one.
There's a study from this spring that I can't stop thinking about, because it quietly indicts the way most of us measure whether our AI product is working.
When I first started, I believed that as long as I built a great product, it would naturally become popular. But as I zoomed out, I realized the market is incredibly competitive. Having a good product alone isn t enough to truly convince users.
That s when I began building my presence on social media creating content about myself, sharing my journey, and talking about the product I m building. I ve come to see this as a very effective way to build trust and spark genuine interest not only in what I make, but also in who I am as a founder.
Happy New Year, everyone. How did you spend the first day of 2026?
For me, the first day of a new year feels like the opening step of a long journey. So instead of rushing into productivity, I chose to begin 2026 by taking care of both my body and my inner world.
Here s how my Day One looked:
An early morning run, pushed myself 1km further to reach 7km Wrote down all my goals for the year, both personal and professional Repotted my flowering plant into a new pot Cooked a nutritious meal for myself with Stranger Things series Started reading a new book Cleaned and reset my living space
Six months ago we added an AI feature to Murror that we were sure would be a breakthrough. It analyzed journal patterns and surfaced emotional insights -- things like "you tend to feel more anxious on Sundays" or "your mood improves when you write about specific people."
The insight quality was genuinely good. We tested it internally, everyone was impressed.
