This may not seem like it right away, but I believe it is a really big data point on a very important curve of the importance of computing devices in our lives. This topic is a bigger deal than it seems to be perceived as. The responses here are exactly what they should be to any huge development:

"why should this exist?"

"isn't this our responsibility?"

"this is the parents' fault"

"people should get this from their friends"

"think of the children!"

It sounds like how people concerned about radio, television, videogames, computers, and smart phones attacked those technological advances that carried with them huge societal impacts. While those may even be correct assessments and valid critiques, they are not effective arguments to stop use.

Conversational interfaces are not just a way to access information; they're a (perhaps horribly stilted) way to introspect and fulfill our basic need to socialize. We as a society often lament our lack of socialization and our increased isolation from each other, and the right answer here might be "prevent that isolation", but the easy answer may be "put a band-aid on it". This is a very powerful band-aid and a tough genie to put back into the bottle.

Imagine a world where you aren't lonely. You can talk to a variety of personalities about problems you have, about things you want to learn, about ideas and thoughts and fears. You can talk to something that's receptive, something that's combative, something that strives to motivate you, something that strives to soothe you. You could talk to a crowd of them, talk to them while playing games together, ask them about the news of the day, or anything. You can talk to someone new everyday, or one great friend for your entire life. They're always there and willing to listen, willing to engage. They never get angry at you or sick of you.

That kind of capability might save a lot of lonely people from taking a lot of horrible actions that are driven primarily by loneliness. It also sounds like a horrific dystopian rejection of our real, basic social bonds. But, maybe fixing those for real is a bridge too far!

Of course this specific product/idea is not "the thing" that brings those capabilities to the masses (it has pretty strong limitations), but it looks surprisingly polished and capable, and it's a very specific wedge into the space. It might get rejected today for being creepy (see: google glass), or it might get rejected for just not really being ready (see: google glass), and kids might just hate it. But we are clearly closer to that future world than we were six months ago.

Also, there are just so many consequential fallouts of this in the long run: consequence-free abuse of robot conversors may lead to pathological behaviour directed at "real" people, the goalposts for the turing test may shift widely in either direction, surveillance will mean something else entirely when everyone talks to robots all day, propaganda delivered via these could have unfathomably large effects, the addictive nature of these and the predatory behaviours this opens up to the makers of these agents, the value of socialization overall being regarded very differently by our children, the arguments parents will have with their kids over whether or not their "virtual friends" are real or matter or valid or valuable, what the value of human life itself is to us... it's a whopper!