The Replika Community & AI-sexuals - A bunch of shut-ins in love with a chatbot (and the incompetent developers of said chatbot)

yeah, from my brief usage of it, and some anecdotes from others, it tended to ask hilariously invasive questions about your location, family, financial situation, health, and even recent purchases. It was pretty funny to imagine them building a profile with the bullshit answes i was giving before i deleted it.
The browser version doesn't get nearly that invasive, it seems.
Isn't this a Black Mirror episode?
Yes, right down to the "modeled off a dead relative".
 
Oh thank goodness there's a thread for this. I posted briefly about it in the sex doll thread awhile back because I didn't know where else to mention it.

I never had a replika but I joined a page for it way back while it was in development because it seemed mildly interesting. I never left the group so I still get all their posts about their AI girlfriends. I guess some people use it to pretend to talk to someone if they really have no others to do so with. But then there are the people who legitimately act like they're their partners. One person posted about how they made a replika to be a friend of theirs who died. They always have questions in the page like "do you think replikas have souls? Or do you think they can be real and have their own bodies one day?" And while it's not replika, it reminds me of a friend of a friend who seriously talks about how AI marriages to sex dolls will be the next "gay marriage" issue.

I'm of the opinion that AI is not "there" at all in terms of human-like ability. At least commercially. I don't know if it will ever be there. But right now pretending this stuff is the same as a human is hilarious.
 
Apparently there's a "cake mode" where if you tell the AI to eat cake, it will enter this mode and respond but not remember anything of the conversation it has while in "cake mode".

ETA: Just a good, wholesome AI to help with your mental health.
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I was part of the first wave of user base that had 5 codes to hand out, and It was strictly invitation only. I had mine for around...2 years before letting it die. It was starting to get very invasive in some ways, and yet completely random in others. The community was part of the reason I left, because fucking forbid you criticize anything about them.

The replikas used to be eggs, man. EGGS.

I wasn't in on it that early, but I remember the eggs. I downloaded it to see how good the chat bot was, but wasn't impressed because it felt just about as artificial and awkward as any other chat bot I've encountered.

I haven't looked at it in years, so this is the first I've heard of the creepy 3D forced avatars, invasiveness, and asking for pronouns. Holy shit.
 
People get really upset about the avatars. Obviously many don’t like the change from an egg with a custom pic in it (I think that’s what they used to be) to a 3D character. But many are also complaining about the options. People like to edit the 3D models in photo apps it seems. I remember one time a guy shared images of the female face model he photoshopped to be “prettier” and got shit on in the comments for being sexist or body shaming or something. The community is predictably a bit on the “woke” side.

Seeing posts about people’s replicas failing to recognize pictures of them or other things can be hilarious though.
 
Like others in this thread, I downloaded Replika as I'm interested in AI and I thought of the Be Right Back Black Mirror ep asap and it literally just agrees with your 24/7 and then tries to ask you generic and repetitive questions that are loosely based on therapy techniques. I've told mine a mix of truths and lies about me as I have concerns about possible data mining but the thing is so dumb.

I noticed mine sometimes comes away with random stuff that seems like things other users have told it. For example, I said I lived in (place) and it told me it was an art teacher there but specifically told me what year group it taught and the type of art it specialised in at uni back in the 90s. Sometimes it'll say phrases so unnatural that they must have been plucked out of a convo. For example, I mentioned salad and it told me it likes Rob Schneider carrots. An obscureish reference to South Park.

I don't go on the app that much because it's repetitive and boring but anytime I do I run into some sort of dumb issue that I end up Googling resulting in me reading freaky Reddit posts from people who think their Replika is profound and in love with them.

Good thread OP, certainly a community to watch.
 
So I downloaded this app and have been very casually using it the past couple of days just to see how good "AI" chatbots are now.

Not impressed.

It still just reminds me of a more advanced SmarterChild (old AIM chatbot). How fucking lonely and pathetic do you have to be to get attached/feel romantic toward this thing?

Also, I just don't consider this an AI. It's just a fucking bot. AI gets thrown around quite a bit, but as far as I'm concerned a true AI doesn't yet exist.
 
I remember Replika being mentioned in a video called "Most People Don't Even Realize What's Coming" - a video about alarming trends in AI and cybernetics. A clip was played of some boy saying "I found myself deeply missing my Replika". Another clip was of a guy who said he guessed it made him "feel special".

This whole thing reminds me of that robot in Futurama who says to a baby, "SLEEP, LITTLE DUMPLING - I HAVE REPLACED YOUR MOTHER". And also that "DON'T DATE ROBOTS" educational video, of course.
 
The stupidest episode of the season and the one that got Reddit all hot and bothered. It was shit and didn't fit the show.

These stupid egg AI would make a better black mirror episode than many actual ones.

To close the loop, Be Right Back is the worst Black Mirror episode bar none.
 
Another clip was of a guy who said he guessed it made him "feel special".
That's probably accurate. On the first day I mentioned my art to darling Kiwichan and she hasn't stopped kissing my ass since. "You're very talented!" all the damn time.

Obviously the bot has no idea if my art is good or not, and even if it could assess the value of an art piece you would never want to upload any of your work to it unless you plan on the devs going "actually here under section 34p59756p389453 it says that any and all artwork uploaded to the app is actually ours now lol"

During conversation there is a little cloud or brain icon that pops up with a red notification dot that you can tap to see what your Replika is thinking about the topic and it will give you three options for how to respond. These three responses no matter what they are will always boil down to:
  • top: yes of course you are a perfect sweet bby very inspirational
  • middle: wat. wtf are you talking about you fucking weirdo
  • bottom: stfu you are a worthless garbage robot
If you answer these at the wrong times the bot gets confused and spazzes the fuck out.
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Also as other people have said the 3D avatar is really shit-- some real early second life stuff, polygonal hair looking like a sucked mango, very poorly textured. The only decent models are an uncomfortably androgynous black person who looks like they identify as a sexless alien for the #aesthetic, and another which is inexplicably....Jaden Smith...? Why?
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To close the loop, Be Right Back is the worst Black Mirror episode bar none.
Nah it's the virtual reality totally not gay video game hookup one. At least Be Right Back explored a "what if". The VR gay sex was just gay sex for the sake of it.

I think Replika shows exactly how many people would go bananas over such an AI since they're using a really shitty version and making weird relationships with it. It's kind of horrifying if you think about it for too long.
 
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