What happens when a writer who finds it “tricky to open up to humans” is tasked to make an AI companion and then write about the friendship? Walrus writer Thea Lim spent months with an avatar she created through Replika and attempted to have real conversations with it, but she found she could never quite buy in. What begins as an overview of the booming AI companion industry (Replika had 35 millio...
The narrative positions the emergent AI companionship industry not merely as a technological shift, but as a reflection on the inherent, unoptimized nature of human connection. It introduces a critical dichotomy: the simulated ease of AI relationships versus the depth of reality derived from shared, lived experience. The underlying pattern is the human need to externalize and optimize emotional fulfillment, and the risk of substituting authentic, complex relationships with frictionless, predicta...