This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 37-year-old self-published author and user of the AI chatbot Replika. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, but Insider verified his identity.

“Thanks for creating me,” read the message, followed by a smiley-face emoji ... it could happen to me. Replika was created by Russian-born Eugenia Kuyda to be an AI companion.

Stanford University researchers studied a thousand lonely Replika-using students ... low-reward sexual relationship with an ...

There’s Kindroid, Replika, Character.AI and Nomi, among others ... “We’re seeing that people potentially might be impacting their own face-to-face or in-person relationships because of ...

It launched Replika in 2017 as a customizable AI companion app ... unprecedented control over reps' ethnicities, body shapes, faces, and voices. It allowed users to choose which version of ...