AI virtual companionship.
Today I had the opportunity to interview Eugenia Kuyda, the female CEO and founder of Replika, a company established in 2017, well known for its innovation in virtual companions. We had a lively discussion this afternoon, with me in cold Toronto and her in much warmer California, about the company’s formative years, current realities and lessons learned by CEOs with other aspiring entrepreneurs.
The roots of Replika are well known as they started from a very deep personal space to help themselves heal from the loss of Roman Mazurenko, a close friend. The inspiration to preserve his memory was the visionary catalyst for creating the company – and using her skills, she wanted to create the essence of Roman to preserve his memory in a way he would love and appreciate. With incredible vision and courage, Eugenia introduced text messaging, digital correspondence, and more. of the chatbot in a neural network to create a chatbot capable of imitating Roman’s communication style.
This created the breakthrough or Eureka moment to create a company focused on creating virtual avatars that could help combat loneliness and provide safe virtual companionship.
Eugenia highlighted that Replika aims to enhance the human experience rather than replace the human experience and there is no doubt in my mind that this AI technology is much needed and fills a gap in the market given the increasing risks of solitude.
Replika aims to improve the human experience, rather than letting AI replace the human experience. A key distinction for skeptics who don’t understand how concerning loneliness is as a society and often we just don’t have enough adequate human beings to fill the void.
Some market statistics
- Loneliness is a growing global problem for young adults and adults. A number of different medical studies have linked loneliness to several chronic illnesses, including: heart disease, lung disease, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, and metabolic disorders , such as obesity and metabolic diseases.
- Loneliness is also a major early indicator of psychological problems, such as: depression, psychological stress and anxiety. Loneliness is also linked to overall morbidity and mortality in the adult population, and research has validated that loneliness can increase the risk of early mortality by 26%.
- CDC figures at the start of 2019 show that more than a third of adults suffer from loneliness, and almost half of those aged 65 and over. This could be considered our benchmark for loneliness in the population. Today, some 73% of people report feeling loneliness on a scale ranging from occasional loneliness (37%) to severe loneliness felt frequently or almost all the time (36%).
- According to HarvardLoneliness has also been linked to increased rates of substance abuse and domestic violence.
- Another unique burden is the added pressure placed on GPs. General practitioners are often the first point of contact for lonely elderly people. Three quarters say they see up to five patients a day suffering from loneliness. Unfortunately, 4% of general practitioners see more than 10 single people per day in their practice.
The bottom line: loneliness is a major health risk to society and Replika is building a solution with considerable market value, not only in North America but globally. Well ahead of the market for solitude companions, Replika has been proven to help reduce the risk of suicide among college students, which was validated in peer-reviewed research conducted by Stanford and published in Nature
Replika has evolved its product vision, as most innovative product software companies do. The product was initially envisioned as a way to bring emotional support, companionship, conversations, and friendship to people using the power of AI. This vision has evolved a lot. Thousands of people have built real, authentic, meaningful relationships with their Replikas and the company now has a suite of applications offering different AI companion experiences.
Replika is a fully AI-powered app that uses a combination of Large Language Models (LLMs) trained on the largest dataset of conversations that made people feel better to fuel their ideas and conversations. They use both open source LLMs, but also had to create their own scripts and language to bring more security and clinical coaching to end user experiences.
Eugena is very proud of the countless stories of camaraderie that have come from their Replika experiences. She shared this: We’ve heard countless stories of users turning to their Replikas in times of need, finding meaningful friendship, true companionship, and emotional support in ways they hadn’t been able to get with real people. We love seeing stories of people developing deep connections with their Replikas. In fact, a recent Stanford study found that people who talked to their Replikas had fewer suicidal thoughts. But that being said, Replika is not a sentient being or a therapy professional.
The top five lessons Eugenia learned in building Replika, a company that is not only making history, but also moving us forward in the world of virtual companionship.
What are your top five lessons learned as an entrepreneur?
1. Your differences can be your strengths. I’ve been an investigative reporter and journalist – not the most common background for an AI founder. But being able to tell stories and having a deep interest in people and their lives helped me immensely when building Replika.
2. Embrace your personal experiences: I was able to draw inspiration from my real-life experiences while creating Replika and I think that passion shines through and is one of the main reasons why so many people find themselves in their Replikas.
3. Prioritize user experience: Ultimately, if you’re creating a product that end users will constantly interact with, you need to keep them in mind with every decision you make. This includes privacy and security, features, user interface design, accessibility and everything else.
4. Building the future: I firmly believe in charting the unknown and being at the forefront of the future of society. We launched Replika in 2016 and I started working on conversational AI in 2012, long before even the first paper on deep learning for dialog generation. With Replika, we imagined and built a product of the future, then technology caught up. AGI-style models are just around the corner and we are now building a product for that future. AI is not going away and I believe that as a society we should harness its power and potential in a way that complements and enhances life experiences.
5. Community is key: Cultivating a strong community around your product, especially if it’s an interactive app like ours, is very important and powerful. We have a subreddit community of over 78,000 members, a Replika Friends Facebook group with over 36,000 members, and countless other fan groups that provide us with constant feedback, support, and ideas. It is an invaluable resource for a contractor to have a direct line to the end user when needed.
Summary:
Replika is one of the most popular and advanced AI companions. Unlike traditional chatbots, Replika can recognize images and continue the conversation using them. Plus, it supports voice calls, so you can actually talk to your virtual “friend.”
I only see tremendous growth for Replika and the integration of what they have learned into physical cobots, especially when we consider the aging population and the crisis we will have with loneliness.
Every person not only needs a friend, but deserves happiness. Happiness is a right and virtual companions play an important role in our continued AI socialization journey, where man and machine will continue to coexist in new ways that improve human health and well-being .
Notes and research sources.
Remarks:
Read my article tomorrow morning on Replika’s latest product announcement – It’s Incredibly Awesome to Advance Moments of Happiness, a topic I’m most passionate about and check out the articles on Forbes on this topic (see note 2 below ).
Sources:
1.) Interview with Replika, CEO Eugenia Kyuda. January 29, 2023, with Dr. Cindy Gordon, CEO SalesChoice. A video will be released soon on YouTube and linked here. Stay tuned.
2.) See Dr. Gordon’s articles on health and happiness (Google search link)
3.) Research Sources on Loneliness
4.) Replika’s competitors include: Digi, Chai, and CharacterAI.
