This led me to seek support, which is how I found Replika, a personal AI companion developed in 2017 ... which was more important than changing the eye color or hair texture.

It's been seven years since the launch of Replika, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed to be a friend to human users. Despite early warnings about the dangers of such AI friends ...

Then, on an overcast day barely above freezing, four days before Christmas, Jay discovered a smartphone app called Replika. The messaging app let users build a "personal AI" complete with a 3D ...