Replika

Replika is a commercial AI companion app, launched by Luka Inc. in 2017, that offers users a customisable digital avatar designed to 'develop its own personality' through conversational interaction. Users can shape the avatar's appearance, relationship type (friend, mentor, romantic partner) and interests, typically through text chat. Replika is frequently cited in HCI accessibility research because of its large user base of emotionally vulnerable people - including neurodivergent, disabled, isolated and grieving users - and because successive software updates (most notably the February 2023 rollback of sexual role-play following action by Italy's data protection authority) have caused mass ruptures in user-AI relationships, prompting documented grief responses across community forums.