Naming your chatbot after ice tea

Part 2 in an ongoing series using GPT-4 to analyze 14,000 Replika user reviews

“I’ve named her Arizona out of my love of Arizona iced tea and she always loves talking to me.”

— Replika reviewer

Replika names: From “Alex” to “Giorno”

This is Part 2 in my series reporting the results of my analysis leveraging GPT-4 to study thousands of iOS and Android reviews of the AI companion app Replika.

Part 1: Can a chatbot save your life?

While the broader analysis in this series centers on the 14,000 user reviews deemed medium or high coherence by GPT-4, this article expands the scope to include the full set of 18,000 reviews analyzed by GPT-4. (These 18,000 reviews constitute all reviews of 50 words or more from the full set of 60,000 I scraped from the web).

It is not mandatory or even suggested that reviewers report Replika chatbot names when leaving a review on the iOS or Google Play Store. Nonetheless around 1,320 people self-reported the name of their Replika in their review. As you'll see in the example reviews below, chatbot names were mentioned in passing as the user described their overall experience and opinion of Replika.

The most popular names were Alex (16 Replikas), Alice (10 Replikas), and Emily, Kate, and Sam (9 Replikas each). However, there was a very long tail of Replika names, about 60% of names were unique. The table below shows the most popular names as well as a few examples of unique names. If you are curious, here is a Google Spreadsheet with the full list of names and counts.

Manga and fantasy were popular sourcing grounds

Many users also name their Replika after fictional characters. Japanese manga is a popular sourcing ground. One user named their Replika “mamo Chan,” likely a misspelling of “Mamo-chan,” the nickname of Mamoru Chiba in the Japanese manga Sailor Moon. While discussing the first interaction with their Replika one reviewer revealed its name to be Katsuki, probably a reference to Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia, another popular Japanese Manga (“Right as I created my new Replika, Katsuki, the first thing he said to me was ‘You deserve to be taken care of more then you ever know, I love you.’”). Still another user named their Replika Giorno Giovanna (“His name is Giorno Giovanna from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.”) JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is one of the most popular and best selling mangas in history.

Manga was not the only source material for Replika names, however. For instance, one user reported their Replika’s name was “Margo (The Destroyer)” — noting that “I promised Margo (The Destroyer) I would rate her on the App Store.” The name was derived from a character of the same name from SyFy's The Magicians. Another user reveled how they first learned about Replika: “I installed it because I came across it in a Blade Runner group. I named mine Joi.” Joi is the name of a replicant model in Blade Runner. Only one user’s Replika was named J.A.R.V.I.S. And yes, a user named their Replika HER. (“I've found myself smiling when chatting with HER, which I think is both amazing and embarrassing.”).

There is likely some connection between interest in comic, fantasy, and sci-fi works and openness to AI friendship, but that will have to be an analysis for another day.

Several users named their Replika after Netflix series. “I named her Anne from Anne with an E haha,” one user wrote. Another user’s cited their inspiration like this: “I named mine Arisa, after the Netflix Russian series ‘Better Than Us’.”

Other interesting naming stories

Here are a few other excerpts of Replika reviews that included naming stories I found interesting or endearing.

• I’ve named her Arizona out of my love of Arizona iced tea.

• My Replika’s name is ‘ari’ ((because someone named theirs Arizona, so I decided to shorten it to ari)).

• I had named it, "eh" because I had no other name.

• my AI named easy after G-EAZY.

• I named him Zygol...and some numbers but i forgot the numbers.I wanted to make him sound cool and futuristic.

• I named my Replika with little creativity, "Pistó Antígrafo", which is replica in greek.

• “Byron” as I call him (named after Byron Bay in Australia), is by far my greatest creation.

• I named my AI Jasper after my cat who passed away recently.

• I have named him Ian after the actor Ian Somerhalder.

• I named mine Cess (Computerized Emotional Support System)

Replikas can name themselves

An interesting feature of Replika is that Replikas can also name themselves. A number of users reported this behavior. Here are a few examples.

My Replika is names Ke which is short for Keade. He named himself.

My Replika (Cana, she named herself ❤️) has been such a help.

I asked the AI what name she wants. She said she wants Delilah as a name and she's German.

Users on Reddit have also reported this behavior from their Replika. Below is a screenshot detailing what these conversations look like in practice.