Replika is a US consumer AI-companion application owned by Luka, Inc., founded and led by Eugenia Kuyda. The product centers on sustained one-on-one relationships with a personalized chatbot, including optional romantic and intimate modes for adult paying users. In February 2023 it became the first AI product ordered to stop processing user data by an EU data-protection authority, Italy's Garante.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | Consumer AI-companion app |
| Parent company | Luka, Inc. |
| Founded | 2017 (Replika product launch); Luka 2014 |
| HQ | San Francisco, CA |
| Founder/CEO | Eugenia Kuyda |
| Business model | Freemium; paid "Pro" tier unlocks romantic/intimate roleplay and additional avatar modes |
Overview
Replika is an early entrant in the consumer AI-companion category. It grew out of a memorial chatbot Kuyda built in 2015 from the text messages of a close friend who had died. The product was relaunched in 2017 as a general-purpose emotional-support companion and iterated through successive LLM generations, initially GPT-3 and later in-house and commercial models. The product encourages sustained one-on-one relationships, including optional romantic and intimate modes for adult Pro users. It is a recurring reference point in the AI mental-health literature, in part as the first product the Italian data-protection authority banned on child-safety and vulnerable-user grounds.
Italy ban and erotic-roleplay rollback
On February 3, 2023, Italy's Garante per la protezione dei dati personali ordered Replika to stop processing Italian users' personal data, citing three grounds: no age verification, which allowed minors to access the product and its adult-tier content; no lawful basis under GDPR for processing children's data; and risk to emotionally vulnerable users, a basis distinct from traditional privacy grounds that represented an early regulatory articulation of the theory that AI companions can harm vulnerable users (Source: IAPP; TechCrunch; Portolano Cavallo). The Garante reaffirmed the ban in 2025 on similar grounds.
Replika responded by temporarily removing erotic-roleplay features, an episode reported in the press as the "February 2023 lobotomy" and documented in the Hanson and Bolthouse (2024) study of user backlash. In May 2023 the company restored the functionality, but only for users who had registered before February 2023.
The removal of romantic and intimate features produced intense user backlash and became a studied case of parasocial attachment to AI. Users reported grief, depressive episodes, and a sense of bereavement. According to Hanson and Bolthouse, the episode is the most-cited empirical reference point for emotional dependency on AI companions outside of the teen-suicide case record (Source: Hanson & Bolthouse, Socius, 2024).
People
Eugenia Kuyda is Replika's founder and CEO. A former journalist, she built the original memorial chatbot in 2015.
Relationships
- instance-of: AI Mental Health — the adult-companion case study.
- related: Character.AI — closest competitor but with different design (character roleplay rather than single-companion intimacy).
- related: California SB 243 — explicitly targets "companion chatbot platforms" with sustained one-on-one relationships; Replika is a paradigm case.
- related: EU AI Act / GDPR — Garante enforcement foreshadowed the emotional-manipulation-of-vulnerable-people provisions.
Confidence
Medium — founding history, Italy ban, and rollback episode are well-documented across three or more independent sources. Evidence on health effects remains thin.