Read the article instead of responding to the title. It was a university conducting formal research, which created AI bots that impersonated different identities. “As a black man…” style posts in ChangeMyView.

The subreddit mods issued a formal complaint to the university when they learned of it, but the university is choosing not to block its publishing on the grounds of lack of harm.

You are included in my initial assertion

Everyone in this post is the annoying IT person who says “why don’t you just run Linux?” to people who don’t even fully understand what an OS is in the first place.

This is routing from LaGuardia airport in NY, meaning the “walking” route has you taking a subway. Maybe the walking buddy is a local NYC thing meant for people who want assistance navigating the trains. I never see this on my app tho so it must have been a trial feature.