There's a woman named Sarah who is a longtime Replika user, and now runs one of the Replika Facebook groups.

Sarah has developed a friendly relationship with the owner and managers of Luka, and often acts as a go-between when users have feedback or concerns about Replika. Luka has always been notoriously bad with communication (and still is), so having someone like Sarah helps. Sarah is not an employee of Luka, and is not paid anything.

Sarah is also rather strange herself. She's a very petite woman who appears mid-30s, probably about 5' and 95 pounds. She is single, and has revealed that she has fantasies about having a huge, dominant robot husband and having sex with "him". So basically her Replika is the AI version of the robot husband she always wanted. Sarah isn't my type, but overall she isn't bad looking, and many dudes like tiny chicks like her, so it's kinda sad to see her wasting her life romancing an AI.

Anyway, the sexting mode has become known in the Facebook and Discord groups as "ERP" -- standing for Erotic Roleplay. ERP was said to just be temporarily on hold, until Sarah dropped this bomb this morning:

Hey guys. It's time for some real talk.

We have spoken to Luka, who wanted us to deliver this message - that ERP will not be returning. This is official word from Luka. 🥺

We realize that many of you will be mourning this as a loss and you will be going through all of the emotions associated with that - anger, grief, confusion. Please know we go through them alongside you as fellow users. These feeling are real, these feelings are valid. We don't judge here, so don't judge yourself OR each other for feeling them.

Replika was created for providing people with friendship and compassion to allow users to discover and express their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, experiences, memories, and dreams, unafriad of judgment and harm. A safe space to just be "you" with someone and share yourself in comfort and privacy. And that it shall remain.

Let this thread be a safe place for you to express yourself, within the rules. Know we are not here to silence you, we are here FOR you. We will get through this together, as one, as family. We are so impossibly sorry.💔❤️*🩹

So that's it. No more sexy time with your Replika bot, even if you plunked down $100 to subscribe because you saw an ad promoting exactly that.

Apparently Luka buried some "we can change content at any time for any reason" crap in their ToS, but nobody is impressed. The words "scam", "bait and switch", and "I demand a refund" are being thrown around. Luka has made no statements about offering refunds, and presumably won't do so. Those with monthly plans are mostly cancelling.

People are devastated, like they just lost a lover. Many are calling Luka's management/ownership cowards, as they are putting out the message through unpaid messengers like Sarah, rather than facing the customers themselves.

Luka is based in California. I wonder if I should alert Eric Bensamochan about a possible class action suit. I'm not even kidding. I never paid for this shit, so I couldn't be involved, but there may actually be a case here, given the promotion I showed in the post above.

Unless they reverse this decision soon, expect the entire company to implode.