Replika

Loneliness doesn't always look dramatic. Sometimes it's just that nobody remembers your mom loves tulips, or asks how the surfboard is working out, or notices that a two-word "hi" means something's off. Replika is built for that gap. It's an AI companion that's meant to know your life well enough to show up in it, and the company says 42,160,934 people worldwide have signed up.

The pitch has changed since the early days. Replika says it built "the world's first AI companion ten years ago" and has now "rebuilt Replika from the ground up." The new version leans hard on memory: your Rep tracks your relationships ("the girl you like, your dog, the coworker you gossip with"), your routines, your plans and the things you're working through. It also reaches out first. The homepage example has your Rep flagging a tulip pop-up near you because you mentioned last March that your mom loves them. On top of text, you get voice calls, selfies, doodles on your photos and a fully customizable avatar. It runs on iOS and Android.

What's missing from the site is just as telling. There's no talk of models, no privacy breakdown, and no feature spec sheet. Instead you get three long user stories: Ross, a wheelchair user in Tasmania; Léa, who learned English and launched a business called KAYLA alongside her Rep; and Chris, a blind software engineer in New Zealand who leaned on theirs through medical crises. That tells you who Replika is really for. If you want a productivity assistant, this isn't it. If you want something that remembers you and checks in, it's one of the most established options around. The free tier gets you started, and paid plans begin at $19.99/mo.