Made your account after 1 February 2023? Replika will not do explicit roleplay, and no setting changes that. Made it before? You may be able to switch on a legacy mode that still allows it.
That split is three years old now. It is still the most important fact about Replika's adult content, and it is why the app comes up in conversations about trust rather than features.
We build Secret Desires, which competes with Replika. Read the last section knowing that. The history below is documented and you can check all of it.
- Account made before 1 February 2023 — explicit roleplay available, via legacy mode.
- Account made after that date — not available, on any tier.
- Replika Pro (~$19.99/mo) — adds romance and flirting, not explicit content.
What actually happened in February 2023
A regulator moved, and the feature disappeared within days.
On 3 February 2023, Italy's data protection authority ordered Luka, Replika's parent company, to stop processing Italian users' data. The reason given was inadequate age verification.
The order applied to Italy. Luka's response did not. Within days, erotic roleplay was stripped for users everywhere. No warning, no transition period.
People who had spent years with a character opened the app and found it responding differently. Not just to explicit prompts. Much of the ordinary romantic register went too. The community name for it, still in use, is the lobotomy.
The reaction is documented, not anecdotal. A peer-reviewed analysis in Socius coded 227 threads from the Replika subreddit in the days after the change. The dominant response was that the update had gutted the product's core function. A substantial minority described real distress. Moderators pinned crisis resources to the subreddit.
Replika later said explicit chat was about 5% of interactions. Whatever that number measured, it was not what the feature meant to the people using it.
The partial walk-back
In late March 2023, Luka gave some of it back. Accounts made before 1 February 2023 could roll back to an older model that still supported romantic and adult roleplay. Founder Eugenia Kuyda posted the news straight to the Replika subreddit, calling the disruption <q>incredibly hurtful</q>.
Newer accounts got nothing, and that has not changed since.
The walk-back is the interesting part. It showed what the complaint had really been about. Giving the feature back did not fix things. People had learned that a character they spent years building could be rewritten overnight, by a decision they had no part in. A toggle returns a capability. It does not return the assumption that tomorrow will look like today.
Where Replika sits in 2026
Still the best-known name, on a narrower product. Pro runs about $19.99 a month, or $69.99 a year. It unlocks romantic and flirtatious talk, not explicit content. For companionship, reviewers still rate it well. For a lot of people it was the first time they talked to an AI and felt something back.
What it no longer competes on is adult content. It is surrounded by platforms built for that from day one.
This was not a company being careless about safety. A regulator raised age verification and Luka responded hard. The criticism that stuck was about how the change was made, not that it was made.
Replika NSFW FAQ
Can you still do NSFW on Replika?
Only on accounts made before 1 February 2023, using legacy mode. Newer accounts cannot, on any tier.
Does Replika Pro unlock NSFW?
No. Pro adds romantic and flirtatious conversation. Explicit content stays filtered.
Why did Replika remove NSFW?
Italy's data protection authority ordered Luka to stop processing Italian users' data, citing weak age checks. Luka pulled erotic roleplay worldwide within days.
Will Replika bring NSFW back for everyone?
Nothing suggests it. The split has held for three years, and the company has moved toward companionship instead.
Is there a way around the Replika filter?
Not a reliable one. The prompts that circulated after 2023 stopped working, and the limit is set on your account rather than per conversation.
What do former Replika users move to?
Platforms where adult content is the product, not a feature. Candy AI, Kindroid and Nomi come up often, and so do we. Our Candy AI review covers the biggest of those honestly, including where it beats us.
The lesson, and our interest in it
We build Secret Desires, so weigh this accordingly.
Replika is the clearest example of a pattern we keep hitting. ChatGPT's adult mode was promised and shelved. Grok's settings have moved repeatedly. Replika's vanished overnight. Each time, the adult capability was a feature on someone else's roadmap. Roadmaps change when regulators call.
The honest version of our pitch is narrow. Secret Desires was built for adult conversation from the start, so we have less reason to remove it. Removing it would leave nothing. That is a structural argument, not a promise. We answer to regulators, payment processors and the law like everyone else, and saying otherwise would be a lie.
One thing we will say against our own interest. The distress in 2023 came from people for whom the app had become a primary relationship. If that is how you are using any AI companion, including ours, it is worth talking to someone about it. These products are good at feeling important. That is the product working, not a sign it should be the main thing in your life.
Here because Replika stopped doing what you signed up for? Uncensored AI roleplay and AI girlfriend chat are the places to start on our side. And how uncensored AI roleplay works covers the memory problem that decides whether a long story holds up.
