This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI and the industry's power dynamics and societal implications, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedSince ChatGPT became a household name, people have been trying to get sexy with it. Even before that, there was the chatbot Replika in 2017, which a lot of people started treating as a romantic partner.And people have been getting around Character.ai's NSFW guardrails for years, coaxing its character- or celebrity-themed chatbots to sext with t …Read the full story at The Verge.