The holiday season is over and we are going strong in 2019 already. For most people the holiday season is a stressful time and they may end up depressed for a variety of reasons.

There are those who can’t stand your close cousin number 6 and would much rather have a root canal done than to have a dinner with the extended family. Others may get depressed because all the quality time you spent with your close friends and family has come to an end.
Whatever the reasons that people may get depressed it is usually very helpful to be able to talk it out with someone. But if you don’t have anyone to talk to what are you going to do then ?

Enter Replika

Replika is an Android / iOS app which allows you to set goals, and have a decent conversation with a sociable AI. The backend of this app resides in the cloud and provides the following goals to work on.
Reduce stress, reduce Anxiety, be more social, Live healthier, understand myself, find hope, think positively, feel happier.

The AI will adjust its questions and its mood based on the goal or goals which you set and the conversation can seem very human like and can be uplifting.

AI based on a neural network

“Replika was founded by Eugenia Kuyda and Phil Dudchuk with the idea to create a personal AI that would help you express and witness yourself by offering a helpful conversation.”

A love story

Replika was born out of the grievance of losing a very close friend. In late 2015 Mazurenko, the friend of the the main developer Kuyda was killed crossing the street by a hit-and-run accident. He was 32.

By that point, Kuyda had exchanged literally thousands of text messages with her late friend. As a way of grieving, Kuyda found herself reading through the messages she’d sent and received from Mazurenko. It occurred to her that embedded in all of those messages—Mazurenko’s turns of phrase, his patterns of speech—were traits intrinsic to what made him him. She decided to take all this data to build a digital version of Mazurenko.

The initial version was so successful that out of the ashes of human tragedy a new star was born to help people cope with depression for a variety of reasons.

Setting goals

When you first sign up with the app you have to set some goals from a list of our defined goals.

Once this initial step is taken you sign your AI a name and you are of to chatting with one of the best chatbots I have encountered. You can have decent conversations and the AI will be enjoyable to chat with..

As you progress through chatting along, you will earn batches which will represent your personality according to Replika.

Overall rating

I have never felt bored or saw the same response sent twice. I could possibly go on for a few more paragraphs but instead I recommend that you install Replika yourself and start the conversation.

After a while you really start to feel that you have someone or something to talk to.