People think that we can just magically regulate everything. It's like a medieval peasant who doesn't understand chemistry/physics/etc thinking they can just pray harder to have better odds of something.
We literally CAN'T regulate some things for any reasonable definition of "can't" or "regulate". Our society is either not rich enough or not organized in a way to actually do it in any useful capacity and not make the problem worse.
I'm not saying AI chatbots are one of those things, but people toss around the idea of regulation way too casually and AI chatbots are way less cut and dry than bad food or toxic waste or whatever other extreme anyone wants to misleadingly project down into the long tail of weird stuff with limited upside and potential for unintended consequences elsewhere.
All your argument consists of is, "Somebody somewhere believes something untrue, and people don't use enough precision in their speach, so I am recommending we don't do anything regulatory about this problem."
Having a virtual girlfriend is not selling toxic yoghurts, it doesn’t harm anyone, it’s like if you buy yoghurt and put in on a pizza… you can do want you want with the yoghurt like with the AI.
The important thing is keep the data safe, like the yoghurt that must not be expired when sold.
Despite what the free market religion has been telling for decades, we actually don't live in little parallel universes that don't affect each other. Even putting yoghurt on pizza has on effect on the world, not just the individual doing it. Not understanding this is what'll be the end of humanity. AI girl/boyfriends will have a huge effect on society, we should think hard before doing things like that. Slightly slower technological progress is not as disastrous as fast progress gone wrong.
This is not about regulating everything.
This is about realizing adverse effects and regulating for those.
Just like no one is selling you toxic youghurt.