Is Replika private? What Luka keeps, shares, and was fined for

The Morse teamPublished October 25, 20268 min read

Replika is private from other people, but only partly private from Luka, Inc., the company that runs it. As of October 2026, Luka says no human at Replika reads your messages, but your chats sit on its servers, pass through outside AI model providers, and stay for up to 60 days after you leave.

We read Replika's privacy policy (last updated May 27, 2026), its terms of service (last updated March 30, 2026), and its help center on October 20, 2026, along with the decision from Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, that fined Luka €5 million. Replika earns some credit here. Its policy rules out using your conversations for ads in plain words, and its help center answers "does a human read this?" directly.

Replika privacy at a glance

Replika's consumer app on the web, iOS, and Android, read October 20, 2026.

Does Replika read your messages?

Replika says its people don't. Its help center answers the question in one line: "No humans join your conversations, and your messages are never read or responded to by people on Replika's behalf" (Replika). Another help page says "you're the only one who can access and manage your conversation history" (Replika).

Software outside Replika does read them. The privacy policy says conversation data, "subject to de-identification and data minimization measures," is sent to "third-party AI language model providers solely to generate conversational responses" (Replika). The policy doesn't name those providers. It says they're contractually barred from training their own models on your data and must delete it after processing. The photos you send are part of that content; the help center says the app uses your camera only "to take pictures and send them to your Replika," and only with your permission (Replika).

The policy describes stored data as protected by "firewalls, role-based access controls, and passwords," and transmissions by "standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption." It never mentions end-to-end encryption, so your stored chats are protected by Luka's own access controls rather than by a key only you hold. The terms keep the right to "refuse or remove any content," and say suspected "fraudulent, abusive or illegal activity" may be "referred to appropriate law enforcement authorities" (Replika).

Is Replika safe? What Italy's privacy regulator found

Italy's Garante fined Luka €5 million in a decision dated April 10, 2025 and announced on May 19, 2025 (Garante). It found that on February 2, 2023, when it had ordered Replika blocked in Italy, Luka hadn't identified a legal basis for its processing, had an inadequate privacy policy, and had no way to check users' ages at sign-up or during use, though it said minors were excluded.

The Garante's technical checks found the age verification Luka had since put in place "continues to be deficient in several respects." It ordered Luka to bring its processing into line and opened a separate investigation into how the model behind Replika is developed and trained, including whether user data is anonymized (Garante). The decision is under appeal, so the Garante has held back publishing the injunction while that's pending.

The decision also records Replika's best-known change. Luka told the Garante it "restricted access to conversations of a sexual nature or relating to other adult content to users active at 1 February 2023 and made such conversations unavailable to new users" (Garante).

In the United States, the Young People's Alliance, Encode, and the Tech Justice Law Project filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in January 2025, asking it to investigate Replika for deceptive advertising and design that fosters "emotional dependence" (Tech Justice Law Project). It's a petition from advocacy groups, and its claims are unproven.

Does Replika train on your chats?

Partly. The policy says Luka collects and "immediately" anonymizes "small portions of Messages and Content data to train our proprietary safety algorithms, enhance chatbot performance, prevent inappropriate outputs." That anonymized data "is not used to train third-party large language models" (Replika). The policy offers no setting to opt out of this; it rests on Luka's "legitimate interests," which you can object to by contacting the company.

Your Replika also learns from you directly. The help center says its memory "draws on patterns from your overall conversation history," and that your Replika "retains everything it has learned since the beginning," even after older messages drop out of the four-month history (Replika). We compare how other companion apps train in Character AI alternatives.

Does Replika share or sell your data?

Not your conversations, by its own promise. The policy says Luka "will never share your conversations with your Replika AI companion or any photos or other content you provide within the Apps" with advertising partners (Replika). The help center's answer to "Do you sell my personal information?" is "No" (Replika).

The policy is narrower than that "No." It shares data about visitors to replika.com, "such as the links you click, pages you visit, IP address, advertising ID, and browser type," with ad companies, and says this "may be considered a 'sale' or 'sharing'" under some laws. You opt out through the cookie settings, and Luka doesn't respond to "Do Not Track" signals (Replika). The policy also allows sharing with a buyer of Luka, "including, in connection with a bankruptcy."

How do you delete Replika chats?

You can't delete single conversations. Replika's help center says "there's no way to delete your entire message history without deleting your account" (Replika). You can remove individual memories: tap your Replika's name, then Memory, and tap one to remove it.

To delete the account in the app, open Settings, tap Account Settings, then Delete Replika, pick a reason, enter your password, and confirm. On the web, sign in at my.replika.com, open Account Settings, and click Delete my Account (Replika). Deleting doesn't cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription; cancel that in the store, or you'll keep being billed (Replika).

For a full erasure under the GDPR, Replika asks you to send a request through its support form, under Privacy & Safety, from your account's email, and says it responds within one month (Replika).

What Replika's help pages say, next to its policy and terms

The help center gives short answers. The legal pages, read the same day, add the conditions.

None of these contradict each other outright. The help center describes what you see in your account, and the policy describes what Luka keeps on its servers.

How Morse keeps your companion chats on your device

Every answer above depends on where your chats live: on Luka's servers, under Luka's policy, for as long as that policy allows. Morse is built so your companion chats stay on your device instead.

• Characters, for companion and roleplay chats that stay with you. Characters is one of Morse's three surfaces, next to Chat and Studio. Your character chats, the characters you make, and your personas are stored in your browser, encrypted, and our servers don't keep your messages or log their content (privacy policy). There's no 60-day window on our servers.
• E2EE, for the conversations no one should read. In Chat, your browser checks a secure enclave's hardware attestation and then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it. Our servers relay ciphertext they can't read, and the enclaves are run by third-party providers, not by Morse. This depends on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. We explain the checks in end-to-end encrypted AI chat.
• Private, for everyday chats on open-weight models. New chats start here. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, and where a provider confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it.
• Anonymous, to talk to GPT, Claude, or Gemini without the provider knowing it's you. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address. The provider may keep the message for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy.

Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads, and runs no advertising trackers or third-party analytics. Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. Morse is for adults only, the Free plan has no cap on character messages, and character chats show crisis lines when a message reads like suicidal thinking, checked on your device. Your history is stored only in your browser, and Morse keeps no copy of your chats on its servers. Clearing your browser, losing the device, or deleting your account deletes your chats, and Morse can't recover them, so keep anything you need.

So is Replika private enough for you?

• Other people reading your chats: Replika says no one at the company does, and only you can talk to your Replika (Replika). On iPhone, turn on the 4-digit PIN or Face ID lock, which Replika says is "only available for iOS users" (Replika). On Morse, your history is encrypted in your browser and locks when you sign out.
• Training: Replika uses small anonymized portions of chats for its own safety algorithms, with no switch to turn it off. Morse doesn't train AI on your chats.
• Deletion: on Replika, deleting anything means deleting the account, and messages can stay for 60 days after. On Morse, your history is stored only in your browser, so clearing your browser or deleting your account deletes your chats, and Morse can't recover them.
• The company itself: Replika's stored chats are protected by Luka's access controls, with no end-to-end encryption. In Morse's E2EE mode, our servers relay ciphertext they can't read.

For how other apps handle the same questions, see are AI chats private.

You can open a character chat by starting free, with no cap on character messages.