Meet the AI-powered chatbot designed to be your virtual companion to help sharpen interpersonal communication skills.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 37-year-old self-published author and user of the AI chatbot Replika. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, but Insider verified his identity.

Long-term users of Replika and other chat bots know this well. Replika froze user access to sexual content in early 2023 and claimed such content was never the goal of the product. Yet legal ...