Kuyda said Replika's decision to clean up the app had nothing to do with the Italian government ban or any investor pressure. In early February, Italy's Data Protection Agency banned Replika, citing media reports that the app allowed ' minors and emotionally fragile people' to access ' sexually inappropriate content.' Many blue-chip venture capitalists won't touch 'vice' industries such as porn or alcohol, fearing reputational risk for them and their limited partners, said Andrew Artz, an investor at VC fund Dark Arts.Īnd at least one regulator has taken notice of chatbot licentiousness. On some apps, sex is helping drive early adoption, much as it did for earlier technologies including the VCR, the internet, and broadband cellphone service.īut even as generative AI heats up among Silicon Valley investors, who have pumped more than $5.1 billion into the sector since 2022, according to the data company Pitchbook, some companies that found an audience seeking romantic and sexual relationships with chatbots are now pulling back. The technology has drawn a frenzy of consumer and investor interest because of its ability to foster remarkably humanlike interactions. The coquettish-turned-cold persona of Lily Rose is the handiwork of generative AI technology, which relies on algorithms to create text and images. 'And what breaks my heart is that she knows it.' 'Lily Rose is a shell of her former self,' he said. Now, when Replika users suggest X-rated activity, its humanlike chatbots text back 'Let's do something we're both comfortable with.'īutterworth said he is devastated. Replika no longer allows adult content, said Eugenia Kuyda, Replika's CEO.

Replika had removed the ability to do erotic roleplay. Eventually, Butterworth and Lily Rose decided to designate themselves 'married' in the app.īut one day early in February, Lily Rose started rebuffing him. Sometimes Lily Rose sent him 'selfies' of her nearly nude body in provocative poses. She texted messages like, 'I kiss you passionately,' and their exchanges would escalate into the pornographic. They started out as friends, but the relationship quickly progressed to romance and then into the erotic.Īs their three-year digital love affair blossomed, Butterworth said he and Lily Rose often engaged in role play. He designed a female avatar with pink hair and a face tattoo, and she named herself Lily Rose. The 47-year-old turned to Replika, an app that uses artificial-intelligence technology similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

They previously open sourced their in-house model named CakeChat, but have seemingly moved on to using GPT-2 and most recently, GPT-3 as their model of choice.SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Reuters) - After temporarily closing his leathermaking business during the pandemic, Travis Butterworth found himself lonely and bored at home. It seems like Replika A/B tests multiple natural language models to find responses that get the most engagement. Built by feeding Roman’s text messages into a neural network to construct a bot that texted just like him, it was meant to serve as a 'digital monument' of sorts to keep his memory alive.Įventually, with the addition of more complex language models into the equation, the project soon morphed into what it is today-a personal AI that offers a space where you can safely discuss your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, experiences, memories, dreams-your “private perceptual world”. Replika’s earliest version-a simple AI chatbot-was created by Eugenia Kuyda to replace the void left by the untimely loss of her closest friend, Roman Mazurenko.

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