Bots are Olympia from E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman" - knowing they're out there has produced the same effect.

In "The Sandman," as soon as the public realizes they've been interacting with a mindless robot when they thought they were interacting with a flesh and blood human woman, they're horrified:

"[I]t was universally deemed an unpardonable imposition to smuggle wooden dolls instead of living persons into respectable tea-parties—for such Olympia had visited with success. The lawyers called it a most subtle deception, and the more culpable, inasmuch as he had planned it so artfully against the public, that not a single soul—a few cunning students excepted—had detected it..."

"[T]he story of the automaton had struck deep root into their souls, and, in fact, an abominable mistrust against human figures in general, began to creep in. Many lovers, to be quite convinced that they were not enamoured of wooden dolls, would request their mistress to sing and dance a little out of time, to embroider and knit, and play with their lap-dogs, while listening to reading, &c.; and, above all, not to listen merely, but also sometimes to talk, in such a manner as presupposed actual thought and feeling." Turing tests before computers.

And they will likely have the same effect on the world as his experience with a secret robot had on Nathaniel: driven to insanity.