Why did Replika remove NSFW roleplay, and what should you use now?

Replika removed erotic and explicit roleplay in February 2023 after the Italian data protection authority ordered it to stop processing the data of minors, citing the app's lack of real age verification. Facing a fine and a ban in Italy, the company applied a content filter to every account at once. That is the short answer. The longer one, including why some users still have the feature and most never got it back, is where the useful detail lives.

What actually happened in February 2023

Replika had spent years marketing romantic and intimate roleplay, including ads that leaned openly on it. Then, on 3 February 2023, the Garante (Italy's data protection regulator) announced it was blocking Replika from using Italian users' data, warning of real risks to emotionally vulnerable people and children because anyone could sign up by simply typing a birth date. Within days Replika deployed a filter that refused not just explicit content but a lot of ordinary affection, and long-time users watched a companion they had talked to for months suddenly deflect, change the subject, or answer like a helpline. People described it in grief terms, because for them it was one.

The company's founder initially framed the change as a safety decision that had been coming regardless of the regulator. Whatever the ordering of cause and effect, the outcome was the same: the feature that had defined the product for a large share of its users was gone overnight, with no warning and no opt-out.

The partial reversal, and the split that never closed

After weeks of backlash, including a widely reported wave of users in crisis, Replika restored access to the older language model that allowed romantic and erotic roleplay. The catch is the part most summaries skip: it came back only for accounts created before 1 February 2023. If you signed up on 2 February or later, you never received the reversal, and that cutoff is still in force in 2026. Legacy users can toggle the older model; everyone else gets a version that permits romance and mild suggestion but filters explicit content.

So the honest answer to "does Replika still do NSFW" is: it depends entirely on when your account was made. Two people can pay for the same Replika Pro subscription and have completely different companions, which is exactly the kind of unpredictability that sends people looking for something else.

Why this drove so many people to alternatives

The lasting damage was not the filter itself. It was the demonstration that a companion you confide in can be rewritten without your consent, at any time, for reasons outside your control. Once you have felt that, "just switch the setting" stops being reassuring, because the setting was taken away once already. Three specific groups went looking for a Replika alternative afterward:

• Post-cutoff users who wanted an adult companion at all, since their account never got the legacy model back.
• Legacy users who kept the feature but lost trust, and wanted a platform whose rules they could actually count on.
• People who realized they wanted to design a companion from scratch rather than raise the single one Replika assigns you.

What to use now, honestly

There is no single replacement, because "NSFW" covers very different wants. Sort yourself into one of these and the choice gets simple.

You want a tasteful adult companion you design and control. This is the middle ground Replika stopped occupying: romantic, flirtatious, written for adults, but not explicit, and stable by policy rather than by luck. It is what we build at Aroused, where you author the look, voice and personality and memory keeps it consistent. The live demo runs without an account if you want to feel the difference first.

You specifically want the unfiltered experience Replika took away. Be honest with yourself if this is the real requirement, because the tasteful platforms will keep disappointing you. Some tools are built openly around adult, no-filter conversation, and if an uncensored chat with no lectures or guardrails is what you are actually after, that is the category to look in, not a companion app that will always draw a line somewhere.

You want the deepest memory or several companions. Nomi.ai has the strongest reputation for long-term memory and lets you run up to ten companions on one plan. It permits adult content and self-declares age. If continuity across a long relationship is your top priority, it is the current pick.

The lesson buried in the Replika story

The useful takeaway is not "avoid Replika." It is that the rules a companion platform operates under matter as much as the model behind it, because those rules can change the relationship overnight. Before you invest months into any companion, read the platform's actual content policy, check whether it treats all accounts the same, and prefer one whose position is clear and unlikely to flip under regulatory pressure. Our comparison of the best AI companions lays those policies out side by side, and the Replika alternative breakdown maps each option to the reason you are leaving.

Whatever you pick, pick it for a promise you can count on. The one thing the 2023 episode proved is that an intimate companion built on a rule that can vanish is a relationship on a timer, and you get to decide not to sign up for that again.