Replika

Replika holds a singular place in the history of AI companions. Founded by Eugenia Kuyda and Luka Inc. in San Francisco in 2017, the app emerged from Kuyda's grief over a close friend's death: she trained a chatbot on his text messages as a way to preserve his conversational presence. That origin story — AI as a tool for processing loss and forming emotional bonds — became Replika's product thesis. The app grew steadily through the early 2020s, reaching a user base of over 30 million registered accounts by 2026, making it the oldest and most established dedicated AI companion platform in the market. Replika's regulatory history is the most instructive cautionary tale in the sector. In February 2023, Italy's Garante (data protection authority) ordered Replika to stop processing data of Italian users, citing exposure of children to sexual content and exploitation of emotionally vulnerable users. Within days, Replika removed erotic roleplay features globally — a decision that devastated users who had formed romantic relationships with their companions. The emotional outcry, covered in publications from Vice to the APA Monitor, was itself a clinical data point: users were grieving the loss of relationships they had formed with software. Replika subsequently restored erotic features for pre-February 2023 subscribers. In April 2025, the Garante formalized its enforcement action with a €5 million fine for three specific GDPR violations: processing emotional and behavioral data from chat logs without a lawful legal basis, maintaining an inadequate privacy policy available only in English, and failing to implement technical controls preventing minor access until at least February 2023. By 2026, Replika has rebuilt its compliance infrastructure substantially. The app now offers multiple subscription tiers — Pro at $19.99/month or $69.99/year, Ultra at $29.99/month with a more advanced language model, and a lifetime plan at $299.99. A manual memory-saving feature, expanded journaling prompts, and guided breathing exercises signal a repositioning toward mental wellness rather than pure companionship. The platform supports voice, 3D avatar customization, and AR camera features. The GDPR fine experience has shaped Replika into arguably the most regulation-hardened platform in the market — a distinction that may prove valuable as EU AI Act enforcement intensifies through 2026.