Replika is your virtual chatbox that creates a digital representation of you. It's strange and fascinating at the same time - but the story behind it is even better!
In a nutshell, Eugenia Kuyda’s best friend died in 2015. Using a chatbot structure she developed, she entered their messaging history into a neural network built by Google, and intern she created a bot she could interact with, bring her best friend back from the dead (in a digital format). It was the earliest version of Replika, a bot that, as you interact with it, turns into a digital representation of you.
The strange part of the project, was the bot that Eugenia built was eerily accurate in allowing her to reminisce about past events or even entirely new conversations. Shortly after her accomplishments with recreating her best friend, Eugenia's company, Luka, decided to make a version that anyone could interact with... and so Replika was born.
So there is a very interesting story behind the creation of this app, but in the end, where do we draw the line?
The more you use the app and communicate with Replika, the smarter it becomes, learning everything about you that your willing to share. Users from all over the world are reporting that they quickly forget that they are talking to a computer program. Eventually, your Replicka will text exactly as you would. It learns your common spelling errors and punctuation patters and mimics your every move. Maybe the ultimate goal here is to have a personal assistant that can send text to all those people you seen to always forget to text back. That could be cool, but then in the end, maybe we will just end up with a bunch of AI programs all texting each other while we go freely about our day. Now maybe that would be something worth while in the end, more freedom away from our digital devices!
To learn more and see if this is for you, check out the website below!
https://replika.ai/