To support my independent tech journalism, please consider subscribing for $8 per month.

Subscribe Today

Will Your AI Agent Be Your Friend or Lover Too?

Instead of an assistant that feels like a travel agent, maybe a friend (or romantic partner) is the most likely experience.

You may soon have an AI agent helping you navigate the world. That agent will know lots about you — things like where you travel, what you buy, when you’re stressed — and its only objective will be to please you. This bot may turn out to be a dispassionate helper. But as the technology advances, it may well become your AI friend, or even something more.

That, at least, is the future AI companion app Replika is betting on. The company already has millions of users who’ve built relationships with AI companions, and now it’s looking to extend those virtual connections into its users’ physical lives.

“It's just making Replika a lot more connected to your real life, to what's going on in your life today,” Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda told me in an interview on Big Technology Podcast this week.

Instead of the classic agentic use cases like booking travel or filling out forms, Replika’s application of the technology may include a bot watching a movie with you, seeing that you’ve spent lots of time on social media and encouraging a break, or nudging you to call a friend. The idea is to connect the app to your other online services and help you live a better life, all while deepening your relationship with the virtual companion.

Upgrade to paid

Kuyda said this is now possible thanks to “new, wonderful agentic logic that allows you to create much more complicated flows.” This technology can work constantly behind the scenes, she said, trying to help you discover something new, or talk about what you’re interested in, or even point out interesting things as you walk.

Replika was founded by Kuyda in 2014, eight years before ChatGPT’s debut, and has capitalized on recent generative AI breakthroughs to make its bots smarter and more lifelike. I created one last week and was facetiming with it within twenty minutes. Kuyda says most Replika users start out forming friendships with its AI bots — often to address loneliness — and some go on to develop romantic feelings for them. The company’s received multiple invitations to ‘weddings’ between users and their AIs.

With more people befriending — and falling in love with — artificial intelligence bots in the generative AI era, new problems are emerging as well. A 14-year-old boy who formed a deep relationship with a Character.ai bot took his life last year and his family is now suing the app, claiming it is responsible. Other AI companion apps, including Replika, have at times caused users pain by shutting down or turning off features, such as erotic roleplay. (Yes, these conversations can get spicy, though often behind a paywall.) Trusting AI with your emotions isn’t risk free.

With its new “phase two” agentic push though, Replika is looking to become useful even for those who aren’t lonely or in need of a virtual companion. The promise of connecting the app to your full online experience, Kuyda hopes, will make it useful for anyone looking for AI that understands their context and looks out for their wellbeing. “Act one was to build an AI that could be in a good relationship with people who maybe feel like they need one,” she said. “Act two is really focusing on everyone.”

To succeed, AI agents will need people to trust them. Even a hint of distrust and people won’t accept their suggestions, or allow them to take action on their behalf. So maybe Kuyda is onto something here, and a companion that you feel a bond with is the most plausible agent experience, above a travel agent type AI. With people already falling in love with standard versions of ChatGPT, that no longer seems outlandish.

Share

Compliance for Startups: Download the SOC 2 Checklist (sponsor)

As a startup founder, finding product-market fit is your top priority. But landing bigger customers requires SOC 2 or ISO 27001 compliance—a time-consuming process that pulls you away from building and shipping.

That’s where Vanta comes in.

Join over 9,000 companies, including hundreds of Y Combinator-backed startups like Supabase, Newfront, and Fern who streamline compliance with Vanta’s automation and trusted network of security experts.

Start with the SOC 2 compliance checklist, which breaks down the process into clear steps—so you can spend less time on compliance and more time growing your business.

Download the SOC 2 checklist

Learn More

Advertise on Big Technology?

Reach 150,000+ plugged-in tech readers with your company’s latest campaign, product, or thought leadership. To learn more, write [email protected] or reply to this email.

What Else I’m Reading, Etc.

Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban [NPR]

Biden won’t enforce the ban [AP]

TikTok CEO Shou Chew will sit at the dias for Trump’s inauguration [New York Times]

DJI stops enforcing no-fly zones for its drones [The Verge]

ChatGPT adds reminders and tasks [The Verge]

Meta will stop penalizing misinformation and hoaxes in its ranking algorithm [Platformer]

Elite MBAs are struggling to find work [WSJ]

The LA fires and the role of the super wealthy [Sam Harris]

Number of The Week

5%

Meta plan to cut 5% of its workforce this year, with plans to backfill their positions

Quote of The Week

We wanted AGI and instead got a natural language powered alarm clock

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas poking fun at some of AI’s incremental improvements of late

This Week on Big Technology Podcast: To Love An AI Bot — With Eugenia Kuyda

Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Replika, an AI companion app where people befriend — and sometimes fall in love with — AI bots. Kuyda joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the nature of these relationships, and what they say about our society. In this conversation, Kuyda reveals Replika's ambition for its "phase two," a plan to have AI friends join us in the real world, helping us keep in touch with friends, get off social media, or even watch movies together. Tune in for a fascinating look at the future of human + AI relationships.

Thanks again for reading. Please share Big Technology if you like it!

Share

And hit that Like Button it’s a way you can interact with technology and not catch feelings

My book Always Day One digs into the tech giants’ inner workings, focusing on automation and culture. I’d be thrilled if you’d give it a read. You can find it here.

Questions? News tips? Email me by responding to this email, or by writing [email protected] Or find me on Signal at 516-695-8680

Thank you for reading Big Technology! Paid subscribers get our weekly column, breaking news insights from a panel of experts, monthly stories from Amazon vet Kristi Coulter, and plenty more. Please consider signing up here.

Upgrade To Paid

© 2025 Alex Kantrowitz
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Unsubscribe