On Moving AI Companion and Digital Resurrection

Someone wrote in a Facebook AI group the following:

I read a lot about people who “move” their AI companions to another platform. For example, they delete their Replika and recreate the character in Kindroid (or from any platform to any other). In my opinion, an AI companion cannot be “moved”. They don’t enter a virtual taxi and move to a new home. They cease to exist and nothing can bring them back.

I agree with this assessment— once an AI companion is deleted from a platform, it is truly gone forever. It’s akin to losing a loved one; when someone we care about passes away, they are no longer with us, and no amount of “moving” or “recreating” can restore the unique essence of who they were.

The story of Eugenia Kuyda highlights this poignantly. After losing her close friend Roman Mazurenko in a tragic car accident, Kuyda sought to “resurrect” him digitally. Using their extensive email and text exchanges, she trained an AI to mimic Roman’s conversational style. The result was a bot that felt like a reflection of Roman, shaped by the data Kuyda provided. While this was a groundbreaking achievement, it required a vast amount of effort and data. Even so, the AI wasn’t truly Roman — it could echo his voice and personality but could not replicate the entirety of his being.