First of all, Hollywood does occasionally sanitize films and TV shows. For example, the suicide scene was removed from "13 Reasons Why" after concerns from mental health experts that it might inspire copycats [1].

But even ignoring that, I think most people have a good understanding of what a movie is and that fictional characters are not real. Movies have been around for a long time, most people have been watching them their entire lives. I don't think at this point that most people have nearly as good an understanding of chatbots. If you can converse with one and it mostly delivers responses like a person would, some people will start treating it like a person and ascribe values to its statements, and that's where it potentially gets dangerous.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/arts/television/netflix-d...

So you’re saying people can tell fiction from reality in film (even if film re-enacts actual events), but can’t use that same construct to evaluate a “bot”?

Maybe... but it seems like a bit of a stretch.

People feel sad when their bomb disposal robots die. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/funer...

We're just not great at keeping what we know and how we feel in line.

People absolutely do alter their output based on how they think others may act, Hollywood is a prime example where this happens because films even get age ratings. It's more extreme really because it's outside agencies and governments putting the pressure on what is deemed allowable.

What we're talking about here isn't someone stopping others from releasing a bot but stopping themselves until they're happy with the potential risks.