(The Verge) – The head of chatbot maker Replika discusses the role AI will play in the future of human relationships.

Replika’s basic pitch is pretty simple: what if you had an AI friend? The company offers avatars you can curate to your liking that basically pretend to be human, so they can be your friend, your therapist, or even your date. You can interact with these avatars through a familiar chatbot interface, as well as make video calls with them and even see them in virtual and augmented reality.

The idea for Replika came from a personal tragedy: almost a decade ago, a friend of Eugenia’s died, and she fed their email and text conversations into a rudimentary language model to resurrect that friend as a chatbot. (Read More)