AI companion and AI girlfriend apps are a useful stress test for a problem that affects many stateful AI products: the claims users care about are easy to market and surprisingly hard to verify. "Long-term memory" can mean remembering a name ten messages later, retaining a fact across sessions, or keeping dozens of facts straight after the conversation has accumulated noise. "Consistent characters" can mean tone, biography, appearance, or all three. A single successful image says almost nothi...