I had the same frustration, and it is part of why I stuck with
honey ai nsfw rather than the others. The characters there do push things forward on their own – not constantly, but often enough that you notice. They bring up something from earlier, shift the mood, or take the scene somewhere you did not plan. That is a completely different experience from sitting there feeding a machine. The other part that helps is the memory, because when they reference something from two days ago it feels like there is actually someone on the other end. You can start without an account and see whether it does this for you, since it is the kind of thing you only really notice after a few sessions rather than in the first five messages.