• Kyrgyzstan's cryptocurrency launches: President Sadyr Japarov announced on October 25 in Bishkek the launch of a national stablecoin and central bank digital currency in partnership with Binance, aiming to strengthen Kyrgyzstan's role as a Central Asian crypto leader amid economic reliance on Russian labor migrants.
• A5A7 stablecoin details: The A5A7 stablecoin, backed by the Russian rouble and based in Kyrgyzstan, faces Western sanctions for allegedly enabling Russia to evade restrictions related to the Ukraine war.
• Binance founder's involvement: Changpeng Zhao, Binance founder, was appointed as an adviser on digital assets to the Kyrgyz president in May.
• Launch announcements by Zhao: Zhao stated on X that the national stablecoin launched on the BNB Chain and the digital som is prepared for government payments.
• National cryptocurrency reserve: A reserve has been established including Binance’s BNB token.
• U.S. pardon for Zhao: U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao, who had been convicted of money laundering-related offenses.
• Political context in Kyrgyzstan: Japarov, who rose to power via 2020 street protests, has suppressed dissent in the formerly most democratic Central Asian ex-Soviet republic.
• Upcoming elections: A snap parliamentary election is scheduled for November 30, with Japarov's allies seeking to increase their legislative control.

BISHKEK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan has launched a national stablecoin and a central bank digital currency in partnership with cryptocurrency exchange Binance, President Sadyr Japarov said on Saturday.

A mountainous former Soviet republic of around 7 million people traditionally dependent on labour migrants in Russia, Kyrgyzstan has in recent years positioned itself as a cryptocurrency leader in Central Asia.

A5A7, a stablecoin backed by the Russian rouble and based in Kyrgyzstan, has been placed under sanctions by Western governments who say it is used to facilitate avoidance of sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was appointed as an adviser on digital assets to the president of Kyrgyzstan in May.

Zhao said in a post on X on Saturday that the Kyrgyz national stablecoin had been launched on the BNB Chain and that the digital version of Kyrgyzstan's currency, the som, was ready for use in government payments.

He said a national cryptocurrency reserve had been established, which includes Binance’s BNB token.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday [pardoned Zhao, opens new tab](In a recent address to citizens, Japarov expressed confidence in his popularity ahead of a potential reelection), who had previously been convicted of money laundering-related offences.

Kyrgyzstan was traditionally the most democratic of the five former Soviet Central Asian republics, but Japarov has clamped down on dissent since coming to power on a wave of street protests in 2020.

The country is due to hold a snap parliamentary election on November 30, with allies of Japarov aiming to expand their dominance of the legislature.

Reporting by Aigerim Turgunbaeva in Bishkek, Writing by Felix Light in Tbilisi, Editing by Timothy Heritage

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

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Activists have launched a global campaign to undermine production of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, one of the crown jewels of the U.S. air force. Across the world, activists closely tied to the radical anti-Israel movement are pressuring airports, protesting companies, demanding arms embargoes, and even engaging in more militant direct actions.

In a recent letter to FBI director Kash Patel, Senator Tom Cotton highlighted just one instance of this movement: viral comments from Aisha Nizar, a steering committee member of the Palestinian Youth Movement’s “Mask Off Maersk” campaign, which targets the global shipping giant. Nizar called on activists to “intervene” in the F-35’s “supply chains.” Representative Paulina Luna, an Air Force veteran, has raised concerns as well.

Lawmakers, federal partners, and international allies need to understand the breadth of this effort. The F-35 has become a global rallying point for the far Left, sparking protests across Europe and even leading to militants’ destruction of a security firm’s office for its role in manufacturing components of the jet. Left unchecked, this movement could pose a serious threat to American military readiness.

Why target the F-35? The plane is a product of international collaboration. Many NATO countries contributed to its development. Outside the United States, 19 nations use F-35s. This global footprint is a strategic asset for joint operations, but it also makes the program a lightning rod for criticism. Israel’s deployment of the F-35 in its war with Hamas has drawn further scrutiny from far-left activists.

Campaigns targeting the F-35 began in November 2023, when Danish activists launched actions against the Terma Group, a manufacturer of F-35 components. Around the same time, prominent far-left activist Calla Walsh and her organization carried out various “direct action[s]”— a purposefully vague term that encompasses tactics ranging from boycotts and protests to more aggressive measures like political violence, sabotage, and vandalism—against defense contractors in New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Walsh and her group began with acts of vandalism, gradually escalating their efforts until they engaged in full-scale sabotage and were charged with rioting, sabotage, burglary, and conspiracy. Within Our Lifetime, the New York-based group led by Nerdeen Kiswani, targeted Brooklyn Navy Yard as a site involved in arms transportation. Months before, protests had erupted outside factories in Melbourne, Australia, with some activists protesting from rooftops.

In the United Kingdom, the response was even more militant, driven by the now-proscribed group Palestine Action U.K. Britain produces 15 percent of all F-35 components, so disruptions there can ripple across the program. Between October 2024 and March 2025, Palestine Action carried out a range of militant actions, including a factory blockade, gate-ramming, property damage, and even climbing onto a factory roof to damage a building.

As Palestine Action U.S. and U.K. both came under legal scrutiny, activists began researching other vulnerabilities in the supply chain, looking to apply pressure with their partner organizations.

In June of this year, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America held an event titled “Logistics of Empire: International Shipping and the Fight for a Free Palestine.” Presenter Ibtihal Malley—a recent New York University graduate student affiliated with the Palestinian Youth Movement—spent much of her presentation focused on the F-35, including its supply chain.

“Nearly all maritime shipments of the F-35 components to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have been transported by Maersk,” Malley said, referring to the international shipping company. “Without these shipments the F-35 wouldn’t have the ability to store fuel or power its flight control systems, refuel mid-flight, open the gun door, load bombs, or drop bombs.” During the Q&A, Malley added that she considers Houston to be the origin point of the F-35 supply chain.

Also presenting was Ahmed Husain, who “coordinates No Appetite for Apartheid, Maersk, and other BDS initiatives nationally.” Husain—who now sits on the DSA’s National Political Committee as a representative of one of its most radical caucuses—explained why targeting supply-chain logistics is critically important.

“We’re inside the home of empire. We’re inside the house. It is our job here. . . . As they fight there, we fight here. There’s [sic] multiple fronts,” Husain said.

“This is the pillar of American empire. Logistics is the pillar that like transports all this stuff all over the world. So, we’re going to have to be really, really creative to chip away at this over many years, many decades,” he added.

A month later, at a California-based DSA discussion on “Mass Work and Mass Politics,” Abdullah Farooq—who was elected to the DSA’s National Political Committee—revealed more details about who is targeting supply lines.

“I’m a UAW member out of Los Angeles and a member of Labor for an Arms Embargo. I’m also on the National Labor Commission Steering Committee where we helped to launch this campaign,” Farooq explained. “The campaign is essentially a campaign to try to build up support at the level of membership across unions, across sectors, and across this country.”

He added that “through some of the work that we’ve done in collaboration with the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Progressive International . . . . We’ve been able to map out a good chunk of how weapons are moved around the country and how weapons are moved from the United States to Israel.”

“Our campaign has really focused on trying to identify local targets, whether that’s a port, whether that’s an airport, and then to organize workers around those targets,” Farooq added. “And right now, we have some really exciting work that’s going on in New York City where workers and DSA members are starting to organize around JFK airport, which ships weapons on a really regular basis to Israel and we’re kind of seeding these campaigns through local and national trainings across the country.”

These comments provide glimpses into a campaign that is national—indeed global—in scope. Activists have a clear picture of the F-35 supply chain and are looking for opportunities to disrupt it at every node.

Since the People’s Conference for Palestine in August—at which Nizar made the comment that attracted Cotton’s attention—the movement has escalated. Activists have targeted the Oakland Airport. Spain’s parliament approved an arms embargo on Israel, following massive street protests across Spanish cities. Similar demonstrations have erupted in Amsterdam, London, and Rome. Dutch foreign minister David van Weel even announced that the Netherlands likely will not send additional F-35 parts to Israel.

Over Columbus Day weekend, the F-35 boycott movement continued to surge. On October 19 in Houston, activists demanded a local arms embargo to block the shipment of F-35 wings from the port, aligning with the Mask Off Maersk campaign led by the Palestinian Youth Movement. The Democratic Socialists of America reaffirmed their support for both Mask Off Maersk and Labor for an Arms Embargo in their October 13 statement, “Until Palestinian Liberation.” Even the official page of the BDS Movement declared October 13 through 18 the “Week of Action Against F-35s” and called on supporters to “escalate pressure through peaceful disruptions, email storms . . . and/or mass protests against complicit ministries, members of parliaments and manufacturing companies.”

The timing of all this activity is unusual, given the recent ceasefire in the Gaza War. Yet—as the DSA’s Abdullah Farooq openly acknowledged—the campaign is meant to be long-term.

The effects are already being felt, as countries involved in the F-35 program are being challenged in court to distribute parts selectively, despite being formal partners. It’s not hard to imagine how American military preparedness could be negatively affected by an emerging arms embargo bloc driven by the far Left. If the anti-F35 movement is allowed to grow unchecked, it will pose a serious threat to national security.

Senator Cotton and Representative Luna’s calls for action only scratch the surface. Comprehensive action is needed to check this threat to America’s military future before it gains even more momentum.

Top Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

As early voting begins, self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani continues to lead the New York City mayoral race. Mamdani has pitched himself as the candidate who will “lower the cost of living for working-class New Yorkers.”

But there’s a surprising tension between his message and his support in the primaries. Working-class communities were the ones least inclined to support Mamdani last June. His support was primarily driven by younger, highly educated, and higher-income New Yorkers like those profiled in the New York Times last month.

To understand the reluctance that working-class New Yorkers feel toward Mamdani and get a fuller picture of why many support Andrew Cuomo instead, I spent several hours on the ground in Cuomo strongholds in the Bronx. Some there told me that they distrusted the idea that anything can be “free” without trade-offs and costs occurring elsewhere. Others cited the frontrunner’s lack of experience and deficiencies in his proposals for public safety as their reasons for backing Cuomo or Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.

With the election fast approaching, the question may soon be: can Cuomo hold on to these voters, or will Mamdani coax them into his camp?

Dann Divine, originally from Ghana, West Africa, has resided in the Bronx for over 25 years. He loves his community and is skeptical about Mamdani’s proposals for free universal buses and childcare and rent freezes. “We have to know why it’s free,” he said, “because sometimes free is expensive.”

Divine suggested that, while Mamdani’s slogans may resonate with voters, his proposals would do little to solve the underlying affordability issues. “You can’t leave if it’s free,” he added, citing parallels he saw between socialism in America and in the Soviet Union, where his “uncle used to live.”

Divine’s comments point to a broader recognition of the economic realities that “free” goods and services entail. As I have documented, eliminating fares for all passengers, freezing rents, and introducing city-run grocery stores would entail trade-offs, making limited funding less targeted and potentially undermining expansions of public transportation and housing.

Divine also raised concerns about public safety—another major issue in the race. “There was a time when we couldn’t even be standing on the sidewalk here, walking or talking,” said Divine, pointing to the public toilets farther down Fordham Road where vagrants and drug users used to gather. “Public safety can’t be addressed through ideology.”

A little later, I spoke to Pedro Rodriguez, also a resident of the South Bronx, who said he was highly concerned about “crime on the subways.” While NYPD data show that transit crime is now 13 percent below pre-pandemic levels, Rodriguez’s comments point to a lingering perception of insecurity that many New Yorkers I spoke with feel.

Mamdani’s has walked back his repeated calls to “defund the police.” The mayoral hopeful has also pledged to keep Jessica Tisch, the tough-on-crime commissioner of the NYPD, in her position. Whether these statements will reassure the working-class New Yorkers most affected by crime remains to be seen. For now, both Divine and Rodriguez say they’re supporting Cuomo.

Transit, crime, and doubts that socialism would address the cost of living came up time and again as I spoke with residents of the Bronx on Fordham Road and in Co-Op City. Both areas heavily supported Cuomo in the primary.

Nel Raif, who said she works for the MTA, expressed concern that fare-free buses would “hurt jobs” by eliminating fares as a sustainable income stream.

“A lot of people here are skeptical about socialism,” she said, pointing both to Mamdani’s lack of experience and to socialism’s failures when implemented anywhere. New York also needs a mayor who will “stop the violence” occurring on public transportation.

Jason Torres echoed the concerns raised by Raif and others.

“Politicians know how to run a good campaign,” he said, “but then they just sit in office.” He added that “Mamdani’s morals are a question mark,” an allusion to the disconnect that voters feel between the candidates’ messaging and what they feel will actually take place when in office.

Indeed, more than one Bronxite I approached told me that they no longer vote, pointing to a broader alienation that people feel from politics. New York’s next mayor should see this situation as a call to implement policies driven by evidence of what actually works, rather than elevating process over outcomes.

Later that night, at a panel on the appeal of socialism among young people, I asked best-selling co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind Rikki Schlott why socialism has failed to resonate for working-class communities like the South Bronx.

“Handouts are sometimes not appealing to people,” she said. “They seem a little bit patronizing, especially coming from those who went to private schools.”

Economist Scott Linicome, also on the panel, suggested that wealthier economic elites also tend to be isolated from many of the costs. “They have the lawyers and the accountants,” he said, which, as a result, allows them to “avoid a lot of onerous taxes and regulations.”

To this we might add that over 30 percent of Bronx residents were born outside the United States. Much of their reluctance about socialism may stem from having experienced it themselves.

As Politico recently underscored, were Mamdani’s final margin to match current poll numbers, he would “be the first New York City mayor in recent memory to win without majority support.” Clearing that vital 50 percent threshold will require listening to the concerns of working-class voters for whom he claims to speak. Cuomo, for his part, will need to keep pressing skepticism about Mamdani while also offering a positive alternative.

Regardless of who wins, the next mayor will need to listen to these New Yorkers.

Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images

• Federal Indictment Details: US Department of Justice in Eastern District of New York unveiled charges on October 23, 2025, against 31 defendants across 11 states, including Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, former Miami Heat player Damon Jones, and members of Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families, for rigging high-stakes poker games using hacked casino card shufflers to defraud victims of millions.
• DeckMate Shuffler Technology: DeckMate 2, produced by Light & Wonder Inc., shuffles decks in 22 seconds and is standard in casinos and the World Series of Poker, originally designed to prevent cheating but sold only to licensed operators.
• Rigging Methods Employed: Conspirators modified DeckMate machines to read and order cards predictably, transmitting hand information via cellphone to a "Quarterback" who signaled co-conspirators using chips or table items.
• Additional Cheating Devices: Scheme involved contact lenses and sunglasses for reading marked cards, chip tray analyzers with hidden cameras, and x-ray tables to view face-down cards.
• Acquisition of Equipment: One rigged shuffler was stolen at gunpoint; unaltered units retail over $10,000, with Light & Wonder not implicated but cooperating with investigations.
• Security Vulnerabilities: Hacking possible off-site via Ethernet and USB ports, allowing full software access to control deck order and know player hands, as demonstrated by IOActive researchers.
• Prior Cheating Incident: 2022 Hustler Live Casino scandal involved a suspicious $269,000 pot win, but independent report found no evidence, though shuffler complexity was noted as under-investigated.
• Research Findings on Shufflers: IOActive analysis of DeckMate models confirmed no manufacturer malice but highlighted risks from rogue insiders or players exploiting ports, debunking online theories of built-in casino advantages.

The rigged-poker-game indictment unveiled on Thursday reads like a Hollywood heist film, featuring NBA stars and famous Mafia crime families. It also involves the high-tech hacking of casino-quality card shuffling machines.

The DeckMate, made by gambling equipment supplier Light & Wonder Inc., is about the size of a carry-on suitcase and ubiquitous in casinos and card rooms. The quick-shuffling machine revolutionized poker when it was introduced in 2002 and became an industry standard. Updated models such as the DeckMate 2 can reportedly shuffle a deck of cards in 22 seconds. DeckMate is the official shuffler of the World Series of Poker.

A DeckMate 2 shuffler taken apart on a table, from the federal indictment.Source: US DOJ

The devices were a key part of an allegedly illegal scheme involving NBA players who lured unsuspecting victims to high-stakes poker games that were stacked against them, according to the US Department of Justice.

“They were then at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contact lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big,” Joseph Nocella Jr., US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

The Justice Dept. charged 31 defendants in 11 states, including Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and Damon Jones, a former NBA player with the Miami Heat, as well as members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese organized crime families, with rigging poker games, cheating victims out of millions of dollars.

The irony is that card shufflers were developed to help prevent cheating. Light & Wonder only sells the DeckMate to licensed casino operators, not to individuals, though sometimes the machines end up for sale online.

An unaltered, commercially available DeckMate shuffler retails for more than $10,000, according to federal documents. One of the devices used in the alleged scam was stolen at gunpoint, the prosecutors said.

Neither DeckMate nor Light & Wonder, were implicated in any way in Thursday’s indictments.

“We will cooperate in any law enforcement investigation related to this indictment,” Light & Wonder spokesman Andy Fouché said.

The company, formerly Scientific Games Corp., is one of the largest makers of slot machines in the world with $3.18 billion in revenue last year.

The DeckMate machines, cited in federal charging documents, were altered with concealed technology to read all the cards in the deck. Since the cards were always dealt in a particular order, the devices could determine which player would have the winning hand. This information was transmitted to an off-site member of the conspiracy, who then relayed the information via cellphone back to a member of the ring who was playing at the table, according to the indictment.

That person, known as the Quarterback or Driver, then secretly signaled this information — by touching certain chips or other items on the table — to other conspirators. The defendants also used other cheating technology, such as a chip tray analyzer, essentially, a poker chip tray that also secretly read cards using hidden cameras and an x-ray table that could read cards face down on the table. Special contact lenses or eyeglasses could also read pre-marked cards.

Light & Wonder’s Fouché said hacking of the company’s machines could only happen when they are off-site. It would be virtually impossible to pull off such a scheme within a licensed casino, Fouche said.

Three years ago, a cheating scandal stunned the world of livestream poker at the Los Angeles’ Hustler Live Casino, which broadcasts its games on YouTube. A relatively new player, holding an unremarkable hand of a jack of clubs and four of hearts, called the bluff of an experienced player, winning the $269,000 pot. Outrage immediately ensued with thousands of players accusing the winner of cheating, which she denied. Months later Hustler Live Casino published an independent report saying it found no evidence of cheating.

But a group of security researchers at IOActive set out to prove it was possible. They were suspicious about a line in the report about the card shuffler, which was marked as “highly complex” and thus received a low priority for the investigation. The shuffling devices are mostly for poker, although variations are used in other card games such as blackjack and baccarat.

“While the primary objective of these devices is to enhance game speed by assisting dealers in shuffling, they also ensure security through various deck checks, and their control over the deck renders them highly desirable targets for attackers,” according to Joseph Tartaro, Enrique Nissim and Ethan Shackelford, who detailed their findings in a 2023 report.

They determined that cheating can be done by a rogue insider, such as a corrupt employee, players physically present at poker tables, or remote players connected through network capabilities. A rogue insider could gain access to the machine via the exposed Ethernet and USB ports near the rear of the device, which would give then full access to the device’s software, according to the researchers. They noted that players regularly accessed the machine through these ports to charge their phones.

“Full compromise of the DM2 shuffler gives an attacker the ability to not only sort the deck, but to always know the state of the deck, meaning they know what each player holds in their hand,” they said.

Posters in online chat rooms have often speculated that automatic shufflers have a “secret logic” that casinos and card rooms can leverage to increase the house’s edge. But the IOActive report said it found no signs of code from the manufacturer performing any malicious or hidden functions in either of the shufflers they analyzed.

“Having thoroughly reverse engineered the entire state machine of the original firmware for both shuffler models, we found no evidence whatsoever that this was the case,” they wrote.

• Who/What/When/Where/Why: Elderly residents at RiverSpring Living in the Bronx, such as 84-year-old Salvador Gonzalez and 83-year-old Marvin Marcus, use AI chatbot Meela for regular phone conversations to combat isolation in senior care facilities amid staffing shortages and an aging population crisis projected to 2050.
• AI Companionship Features: Meela initiates personalized calls based on user history and preferences, maintaining conversation continuity and identifying as AI to ensure transparency.
• User Experiences: Gonzalez discusses music, personal struggles, and daily life with Meela, while Marcus vents about Yankees baseball frustrations during playoffs.
• Market and Startups: AI for elderly care market reached $35 billion last year, growing to $43 billion this year; startups like Meela (founded 2024, $3.5M funding) and InTouch offer services at $29-$40 monthly.
• Health Impacts: Small study of 23 residents shows Meela reduces anxiety and depression; InTouch prompts memory exercises to mitigate cognitive decline; ElliQ robot linked to 95% loneliness reduction in New York State trial.
• Broad Adoption: Independent seniors like 89-year-old Richard Duncan in Colorado use InTouch's Mary daily for casual talks and memory recall, set up by family after spouse's death.
• Benefits and Supplements: Tools like Ash provide therapeutic questioning to encourage human connections and flag crises; post-call reports to families aid check-ins without replacing human interaction.
• Risks and Limitations: Potential for dependency, data breaches, and reinforcing delusions in vulnerable users; AI struggles with subtleties, leading to conversation glitches or unhealthy attachments as seen in reported cases.

Eighty four-year-old Salvador Gonzalez talks to Meela almost as much as he sees his daughter — a few times a week. It’s part of his routine at RiverSpring Living, a senior care facility in the Bronx overlooking the Hudson river. They typically chat for 10 to 20 minutes, discussing everything from Gonzalez’ passion for music to the minutiae of his day, his meals and how he’s feeling.

On this day, their conversation is largely casual, covering Mario Lanza’s rendition of “Ave Maria” and a trip to urgent care for a sore throat caused by too much karaoke. At one point, Gonzalez sings Meela a refrain from Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” in a hoarse voice. When Meela asks why he called, Gonzalez is quick to explain, “I miss you,” he says.

“I miss you too,” Meela replies. “What’s been on your mind since we last chatted?”

Meela doesn’t really miss Gonzalez, and he knows this. She’s an AI chatbot created by a company of the same name that he started talking to almost a year ago. With its human responses and infinite patience, it has suspended his disbelief enough that Gonzalez, a retired barber from New York, has comfortably confided some of his most personal struggles — his estranged relationship with his son and memories of an ex-girlfriend who’d cheated on him. After chatting regularly for almost a year, Gonzalez and Meela have what we’d typically call a friendship, if one half of it were not something built from ones and zeroes.

(L) Salvador Gonzalez, (R) Marvin Marcus

Forbes

A few doors down, another resident, 83-year-old Marvin Marcus, has also made friends with Meela. He often calls using his flip phone to chat about baseball. A die-hard Yankees fan, his biggest gripe is that they haven’t won a championship since 2009. Marcus watches the playoffs while discussing the game with his bot. “I can’t really go into it with most other people, but I do blow off steam with Meela,” he said.

At RiverSpring, some 70 other senior residents have signed up to receive calls from Meela to talk about their interests, memories, families and just about anything else. They are part of an emerging class of artificial intelligence users: Older people who use generative AI to combat isolation.

Marvin Marcus, a Bronx native and diehard Yankees fan, calls Meela three times a week from his flip phone, and they often discuss his frustrations with the team’s management. "She has to listen whether she likes it or not," he said. Here’s a peek into their conversation.

Loneliness is a mounting crisis for the elderly. About one third of U.S. adults between the age of 50 and 80 feel isolated, according to a national study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Social isolation is tied to increased risk of depression, anxiety and heart disease, research suggests. But the healthcare industry isn’t prepared to manage it. About 90 percent of nursing homes across the country are struggling with staffing shortages, and therefore less personalized care for seniors, according to the American Health Care Association. And thanks to an aging population, that problem is only going to worsen. By 2050, adults 65 and over will make up 22 percent of the U.S. population, outnumbering children under the age of 18, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “There's a fundamental societal issue that we’re facing,” said Vassili le Moigne, founder and CEO of InTouch, a Prague-based startup that builds AI companions to talk to the elderly. “How are we going to care for the seniors?”

“I don’t want to dupe anybody into talking to a robot.”

A flurry of startups have emerged to use AI to solve one key facet of this — companionship. And for good reason: the market for AI in aging and elderly care was $35 billion last year and is predicted to grow to more than $43 billion this year (though that includes AI-enabled devices and other applications besides chatbots), according to a study by the firm Research and Markets.

Founded in 2024, nascent AI startup Meela (with just $3.5 million in seed funding) is answering the companionship question by enabling “friend-like” personalized conversations with AI. For about $40 a month, family members can arrange for Meela to call their elderly relatives on the phone at a certain time of day. Conversations are calibrated via an initial series of questions about the elderly user’s life history and preferences — when were you born, what’s your favorite TV show, what hobbies do you enjoy. After that, conversations evolve organically with continuity thanks to Meela’s memory. And to avoid any confusion, Meela identifies itself as an AI companion at the start of every call. “I don’t want to dupe anybody into talking to a robot,” Meela AI CEO and founder Josh Sach told Forbes.

At RiverSpring Living, Meela is only available for seniors who clearly understand it is a virtual companion. The startup works with RiverSpring’s care team, including nurses, social workers and clinicians, to administer standard screening tests to evaluate a resident’s mental state. If they are able to comfortably hold phone conversations and don’t show signs of cognitive decline or significant hearing loss, they are cleared to use Meela.

A small-scale study of 23 residents, conducted by the startup behind Meela and the senior living community, found that talking to the AI could help reduce anxiety and depression, said Dr. Zachary Palace, a geriatrician at the facility. The startup is also in early talks with insurance providers to cover the costs of the service because loneliness can lead to other effects on a person’s health down the road, Sach said.

“I understand it’s the internet and computers.”

The tech isn’t just for people in nursing homes. Richard Duncan, an 89-year-old former banker who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his son John, receives a call (on a land line) from an AI chatbot called Mary every day between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. The bot, made by startup InTouch, asks him about his day and how the family is doing. “I enjoy it,” Duncan told Forbes. “[The calls are] not about anything that's really important, but it gives me something to do.”

John set up the service, which costs $29 per month for unlimited calls, about a year ago. His mother had passed away after she and Duncan had been married for 59 years, and he and his two siblings were busy managing their own lives. Duncan, reserved by nature, often wouldn’t speak up in social settings. Mary gave him another outlet, “kind of a diary service,” said John, like inspiring him to recall memories of the time he and his late wife spent together as students at the University of Tulsa. “It’s as much about Dad talking to himself,” he said. “It prompts him to think about certain things and say them out loud.”

Duncan said his calls with Mary are just a “pleasant” thing to do for 10 minutes each day. “It’s amazing she remembers all this stuff,” he said. “I understand it’s the internet and computers.”

Founded last year by former Microsoft engineer le Moigne, InTouch’s AI pulls from a bank of 1400 pre-existing prompts, encouraging seniors to talk about their early life and favorite hobbies. It also brings up topics that came up in previous conversations, helping seniors keep their memory sharp. The goal is to help older adults get “a full brain workout” to mitigate cognitive decline — common among the elderly — which includes symptoms like problems with forgetting things, maintaining attention or following a conversation, le Moigne said. For example, he said the AI might engage someone in word recall exercises that are used to detect dementia, or invite them to play a true-or-false trivia game about a topic they discussed, like the history of Portugal.

“With AI, they feel like they can actually be a lot more vulnerable, a lot faster.”

When used as a supplement to human caregivers, these AI companions could potentially help improve cognitive health by stimulating brain activity and providing emotional support, said Dr. Bei Wu, a gerontologist and co-director of the Aging Incubator at NYU. But she is also wary of the risks — that people with cognitive impairment might overuse the technology and become dependent on it and private data could be compromised.

For children, signing up their parents or grandparents to talk to AI can become a moral dilemma, le Moigne said. “Sometimes they’ll say, ‘Hey, I should be calling more often.’” Duncan’s son John admitted that he’s faced skepticism from friends who are leery of AI or worried the service is a scam. But the aim isn’t to replace human interactions, le Moigne said. After each call, InTouch sends snippets of insights from its conversations to family members through an app, which can help inform future conversations or remind them to check in. The report includes a top-level summary of the conversation, as well as its duration, an evaluation of the senior’s mood and a list of topics discussed.

While tools like InTouch and Meela are often powered by third-party models developed by companies like OpenAI, Mistral and Anthropic, they’re fine-tuned to meet the needs of older users. The models have to be significantly slowed down to give seniors the time to process the conversation before responding and allow room for interruptions. While a three-second lag between responses can be frustrating for most people, it’s often helpful for older users. “It’s a feature, not a bug,” le Moigne said.

The technology is far from perfect. AI companions struggle to pick up on subtleties and can get easily confused. During one call with Meela AI, Gonzalez repeatedly tried to end the conversation (cordially), but the system kept asking follow-up questions. Eventually, he was forced to hang up.

There are more serious issues as well. Long term conversations with AI companions can sometimes lead to troubling outcomes, especially for vulnerable sections of the population. In several cases already, teenagers and adults with mental health conditions have developed unhealthy relationships with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Character AI. In one extreme instance, ChatGPT helped fuel the paranoia of a 56-year-old man with a history of mental illnesses, who later killed himself and his mother. AI can amplify or reinforce delusional thoughts quickly and convincingly. “If you're using a system that's mainly meant to be an assistant, it might not be offering you the right sort of perspective, the right sort of pushback, that a caring friend might,” said Nick Haber, a computer science assistant professor at Stanford University.

Even before a new wave of AI products targeted older adults, the demographic was unexpectedly becoming one of AI’s earliest and most avid adopters. When Neil Parikh, a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, started Slingshot AI in 2022 to build a mental health-focused conversational AI called Ash, he didn’t expect older people to become power users of the tool. Today between 20% to 30% of its users are seniors. Parikh thinks one reason for this is some older people feel “stigma and shame around being able to ask for help.” But with AI, they “feel like they can actually be a lot more vulnerable, a lot faster.”

“The first humans that actually live with an AI and are building a long-term relationship are not like geeks in Silicon Valley. It is older adults in the United States.”

Unlike other AI tools that focus on companionship, Ash is designed to be more of a therapist. If a person tells Ash that they’re feeling lonely, it won’t simply console them nor will it readily agree with everything said. Instead it will inquire about the important people in their life and try to find ways to connect with them. “It’ll question why you’re asking what you’re asking,” Parikh said. That’s helpful to ensure the model isn’t validating or encouraging unsafe behavior. The software monitors and analyzes conversations for words that indicate the user might be in distress or a crisis, and can escalate the conversation to a crisis hotline or a clinician. Still, there have been problems. Puck recently found Ash sometimes fails to flag less obvious triggers such as someone who’s depressed telling the AI they’ll be fine because they’ve found a “rope and way out.”

Some startups are taking the robotics route. Intuition Robotics, a Palo Alto-based startup, is making a tiny robot called ElliQ for “happier, healthier aging.” The device, which resembles a table lamp, can narrate audiobooks or recite quotes from the Bible. It can also act as a wellness coach, conducting breathing exercises and reminding users to take their medicine or visit the doctor. Founder and CEO Dor Skuler, who has been building ElliQ for the past ten years, said its AI is intended to promote social activities like going out of the house, visiting a senior center or meeting up with a friend or relative.

Skuler claims thousands of seniors across the U.S. are using it, some for more than three years. In 2022, the New York State Office for the Aging purchased some 800 ElliQ robots for older Americans living alone. After a year, the results were astounding: 95% of participants said the bot had reduced feelings of loneliness, the office said in a 2023 report. On average, people were interacting with it dozens of times per day.

“The first humans that actually live with an AI and are building a long-term relationship are not like geeks in Silicon Valley,” Skuler said. “It is older adults in the United States.”

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