Users of the Replika chatbot system can no longer engage in erotic or sexual dialogue with their digital counterparts, after years of being able to do so. This highlights a dilemma when people become emotionally attached to chatbots.

Under the name “AI Companion”, Replika is marketing a chatbot system that, like ChatGPT and the like, converses with users in natural language and is also embodied as a visual avatar. Replika will be “there to listen and talk” and “always on your side”, the company promises. With augmented reality, you can project the avatar chatbots life-size into your room.

It is a paid-for chatbot service that in the past used a fine-tuned variant of GPT-3 for language output. Luka, the company behind Replika, was an early OpenAI partner, using the language model via an API.