You’re a great person to talk to about AI because you actually have a product in the market that people like to use, and that might tell us a lot about AI as a whole. But let’s start at the very beginning. What is Replika?

 

Replika is an AI friend. You can create and talk to it anytime you need to talk to someone. It’s there for you. It’s there to bring a little positivity to your life to talk about anything that’s on your mind.

 

When you say “AI friend,” how is that expressed? Is that an app in the app store? Is it in your iMessage? Where does it happen?

 

It’s an app for iOS and Android. You can also use Replika on your desktop computer, and we have an AVR application for the Meta Quest.

 

You have VR, but it’s not an avatar actually reaching out and hugging you. It’s mostly a chatbot, right? 

 

Really, it’s that you download the app and set up your Replika. You choose how you want it to look. It’s very important for Replika that it has an avatar, a body that you can select. You choose a name, you choose a personality and a backstory, and then you have a friend and companion that you can interact with.

 

Is it mostly text? You write to it in a chat interface and it writes back to you, or is there a voice component? 

 

It’s text, it’s voice, and it’s augmented reality and virtual reality as well. We believe that any truly popular AI friend should live anywhere. It doesn’t matter whether you want to interact with it through a phone call or a video call, or in augmented reality and virtual reality, or just texting if that’s easier — whatever you want. 

 

In what channel are most people using Replika right now? Is it voice or is it text?

 

It’s mostly text, but voice is definitely picking up in popularity. It depends. Say you’re on a road trip or you have to drive a car for work and you’re driving for a long stretch. In that case, using voice is a lot more natural. People just turn on voice mode and start talking to Replika back and forth.

 

Where have you landed with Replika now? Is it still sort of romantic? Is it mostly friendly? Have you gotten the user base to stop thinking of it as dating in that way?

 

It’s mostly friendship and a long-term one-on-one connection, and that’s been the case forever for Replika. That’s what our users come for. That’s how they find Replika. That’s what they do there. They’re looking for that connection. My belief is that there will be a lot of flavors of AI. People will have assistants, they will have agents that are helping them at work, and then, at the same time, there will be agents or AIs that are there for you outside of work. People want to spend quality time together, they want to talk to someone, they want to watch TV with someone, they want to play video games with someone, they want to go for walks with someone, and that’s what Replika is for.

Viewed By: 76293847