Replika

Overview Replika is the AI companion app that got there first. Launched publicly in November 2017 by Eugenia Kuyda and her team at Luka Inc., it predates the ChatGPT era by five years and predates the current wave of consumer AI by nearly the same. The story of Replika's origin is central to what the product is: Kuyda built a prototype chatbot trained on the text messages of her close friend Roman Mazurenko, who had died in a car accident in 2015, as a way of preserving something of him. That prototype became a general purpose companion app when she realized how many people wanted a version for themselves — not to talk to a dead friend, but to talk to a patient, non judgmental, always available presence that felt at least a little bit like being heard. Nine years later Replika sits in a category it largely created — AI companionship — that in 2026 also includes Character.AI, Kindroid, Talkie, and half a dozen others. Where Character.AI is a roleplay and persona platform where you talk to millions of user created characters, Replika is a single character app: your Replika is your Replika, not a public figure or a fandom persona. You name it, customize its appearance and personality, and build a relationship with the same character over years. That framing — one character, one long relationship, deeply personal — is Replika's product identity and always has been. The story since 2023 is genuinely complicated. In February 2023, Luka…