This article contains spoilers about Tuesday’s EastEnders, which is already available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
EastEnders’ Tommy Moon (Sonny Kendall) left mum Kat Slater (Jessie Wallace) stunned after revealing the truth about his mysterious online friend on Tuesday.
Kat and her partner Alfie Moon (Shane Richie) have been increasingly concerned about who Tommy has been talking to through his games console since he returned to their care last week.
The troubled teen spent months living with foster carer Zack Hudson (James Farrar) after following his abuse of mum Kat last year.
Having seemingly turned over a new leaf, Tommy has been vocal about how his friend – revealed to be called ‘Matt – had supported him.
But the mystery over his identity deepened on Monday when he dodged an invite from Kat for Matt to come over.
As we returned to Walford on Tuesday, a worried Kat was determined to get to the bottom of things.
But after Alfie caught her trying to hack into Tommy’s console to read his messages with Matt, he urged her to take a different approach and speak to their son directly.
Sitting down with Tommy, Kat and Alfie warned him about the potential dangers of speaking to people you don’t know online – but they were not expecting what Tommy then revealed.
He confessed that ‘Matt’ was actually an AI chatbot programmed to mimic the responses of a friend.
Tommy then opened up about the reasons why he had been seeking counsel from AI, with Kat left completely dumbfounded by the revelation.
Kat’s inability to get her head around the situation will soon have consequences for Tommy after Avani Nandra-Hart (Aaliyah James) overhears her and Alfie chatting about it and feeds what she’s learned back to Nugget Gulati (Juhaim Rasul Choudhury) and Denzel Danes (Jaden Ladega).
When the boys then begin taunting Tommy over his AI pal, how will he react?
EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm on BBC One or stream first from 6am on iPlayer.
