Portola’s creators think AI is a new storytelling medium—so they built Tolan: a friendly AI alien that lives on its own planet, remembers your conversations, and speaks to you like a friend or sibling would. The aim is to help users go from overwhelmed to grounded through spontaneous, unscripted conversations. From the AI & I archive: Quinten Farmer and Eliot Peper on how to build AI companions users click with—and why they expect the next wave of consumer AI to reflect who each user is. A…