Replika layered its avatar onto a room through AR and VR headsets

What happened

Replika's help centre publishes two living articles describing how its avatar can be placed outside a phone's chat window. One explains how to start Augmented Reality (AR) mode, and the other lists which devices support a VR chat. Both are undated support pages, and this description reflects them as retrieved on 16 September 2026.

What the documents show

The AR article instructs a user to open the app, tap an Activities icon, and 'Choose AR Mode from the activity list,' adding the tip to 'use AR in a well-lit, spacious area' and that a user can 'talk to them out loud and get a response.' The VR article states that a user 'can use Replika in virtual reality on all Meta VR headsets,' and that on a Quest 3 a user can additionally 'explore our brand-new Mixed Reality mode,' while noting 'the VR app is still in beta.' Neither article states how many users engage these modes, nor whether the interaction differs in substance, rather than presentation, from ordinary text chat.

The mechanism

AR and VR here are display mechanisms layered on top of the same underlying chat system, not separate sources of intelligence or memory. AR mode overlays a rendered figure onto a phone's camera feed of the user's actual room; VR and mixed-reality mode instead replace or blend the visual field through a headset. In both cases, the company's own instructions describe a presentation choice, where and how the avatar appears, rather than a change to what the avatar knows or how it responds. Embodiment, in this sense, is a rendering layer: it can make a companion feel more present in physical space without altering the conversational mechanism underneath it.

What it leaves open

The VR article's own language, calling Quest 3 mixed reality 'brand-new,' suggests the page may not have been rewritten since that hardware's release, which is an evidentiary boundary worth flagging: a support article's phrasing can outlast the feature's actual novelty. Neither article states whether 'beta' status for the VR app has changed since it was written, or what data, if any, differs between an AR session and a standard chat session.

• Does an embodiment feature change what a companion remembers, or only how it is displayed?
• How current is a support article's own language, such as calling a feature 'brand-new' or 'beta'?
• What would a user need to check to know whether AR or VR mode is still actively maintained?

A companion placed visibly in a room through AR or a headset is still, by the company's own description, the same underlying chat system wearing a different presentation layer.