Replika is probably the most prominent but I suspect more will be coming. Essentially, ChatBots that are much more sophisticated than previous iterations of them.
What are your overall thoughts on them?
At first I thought it was a terrible idea and retarded but after thinking about it, I kind of think it's a great idea to completely remove the need for intimate relations with the opposite sex and simply replacing it with an AI Chatbot.
The total progression of this would be adding the AI onto some sort of sexbot or android (way future). Eventually the need for a human companion could be entirely replaced. 2D might really come to life after-all.
I've always been skeptical of the idea that robots could replace real women. Maybe it's just me but I just can't imagine it being real enough, even if you ignore the need for reproduction. Don't get me wrong, the extremely low quality of modern women makes the motivation or wanting something like this easy to understand. I just don't think the physical aspect is replaceable. The social aspect might be if the bots are good enough, and I guess hiring a professional is always an option if you want the physical stuff.
I honestly, never imagined it until I started frequenting escorts. I realized "escorting" is a learned skill no different than any other profession. Like when you go to a car dealership and the salesman has a certain sales style that is learned from the car salesman training manual. Escorts operate the same. And here's the thing. They're still better than "real" girls who haven't learned how to say and act the way men want. Just like customer service skills can be learned and taught to others, so too can doing what men want. If escorts can all learn to say and do the same sort of thing I think AI Chatbots can easily learn exactly what they need to in order to be better than "real" women. That's my thoughts anyway. I truly think in the future, "real" humans will be inferior to the computer alternatives.