Artem Rodichev’s journey into artificial intelligence started with a spark of imagination and a vision shaped by science fiction. Born and raised in Kazakhstan, he moved to the United States a decade ago to join Replika, one of the pioneering companies creating AI companions.
“The main goal of Replika is to be a friend, to chat with you about your day, your life, your interests,” he says. “With the final goal to make you feel better after these conversations.”
Rodichev was captivated by the idea of emotionally intelligent machines after watching the movies Her and Blade Runner 2049. The characters Samantha and Joi showed him a future where technology was not just functional but deeply emotional.
“I thought it was weird that we spend ten hours a day with smartphones and laptops, but we don’t connect with technology on an emotional level,” he says. “We should build empathetic AI to bridge that gap.”
At Replika, Rodichev served as head of AI for seven years, building the company’s core technology from the ground up and helping it grow to more than 30 million users. The challenges were immense. Maintaining engaging, coherent, and emotionally resonant conversations across a vast user base was no easy task. Yet the results were striking. During the pandemic, Replika became a lifeline for many isolated people.
“We saw users deeply connected with their companions,” he says. “Some even fell in love with their Replika bots. Some even married them.”
Replika offered multimodal interactions, text chats, voice calls, and the ability to see your avatar in augmented or virtual reality. Users could customise avatars with clothing and accessories. Yet as the platform grew, Rodichev began to see its limitations.
“The first limitation was the focus on a single personality,” he says. “You have only one chat, only one companion. Users wanted full customisation, full scalability. They wanted a whole universe of characters.”
The second limitation was Replika’s consumer-only focus.
“We were building powerful technology for one use case. I thought, why not scale it? Why not build empathetic AI for thousands of use cases and thousands of businesses?”
That realisation led Rodichev to found Ex-human.
“At Ex-human, we built empathetic AI at scale,” he says. “We allow people to create and customise diverse characters, enabling unlimited scalability.”
Each character on the platform is fully customisable, from backstory and speaking style to emotions, voice and visual appearance. Users can interact with characters via text, voice calls, and even receive contextual images and videos.
“We try to create a Netflix-like experience,” Rodichev says. “But instead of just sitting and watching, you are part of the story.”
Ex-human focuses on both consumer and business markets. The company’s consumer-facing product is Botify AI, a platform where users have already created more than five million characters. Botify sees one million monthly active users, with remarkably high engagement.
“Users spend more than 90 minutes per day chatting with bots,” he says. “Power users spend more than two and a half hours.”
Users interact with a wide range of bots, from anime characters to dating companions to fictional vampires. Some use Botify as a storytelling platform. Others seek companionship, coaching, or playful interactions.
Premium users can access unlimited chats, audio responses, and rich media like images and videos.
“If you want to have unlimited chats, you need to subscribe,” Rodichev explains. The data gathered from these interactions, fully consented under the platform’s terms of service, is used to improve the AI models.
“We securely store the data and use it only to fine-tune our tech stack,” he says. “After each fine-tuning step, our characters become better, smarter, more engaging, more empathetic.”
Ex-human’s technology is also offered to B2B clients. The company has around 60 paying B2B customers, mainly in entertainment and communication sectors.
“We provide services to game developers to power NPCs inside games, to dating apps to create dating coaches, and even to influencers who want AI copies of themselves to engage with fans,” Rodichev says.
One notable partnership is with Grindr, the LGBTQ+ dating app. Ex-human provides a dating coach AI that analyses user conversations and offers personalised advice.
“A lot of users struggle with communication,” he says. “Our AI can suggest conversation starters or smart replies that match the user’s speaking style and the context of the dialogue.”
Ex-human is also in discussions with major IP holders. Rodichev described a future where beloved characters from companies like Disney, Netflix or Warner Brothers could become interactive, empathetic AI companions.
“They sit on tons of IP and heavily underutilise it,” he says. “We can make these characters live.”
The business is growing fast. Ex-human now has 20 employees spread across 12 countries, working remotely. Based in Boulder, Colorado, Rodichev is determined to lead a new wave of empathetic AI that feels genuinely human without crossing ethical boundaries.
Looking ahead, he sees huge opportunities. “Wherever empathy and communication are essential, we can provide our service,” he says.
Rodichev also emphasised that Ex-human is not tied to blockchain or web3 trends. “We don’t see practical applications of blockchain for companions,” he says. “If you can build it without blockchain, you should.”
His vision remains clear: to create AI that not only informs but connects, entertains, supports and evolves alongside us. In a world increasingly mediated by technology, Rodichev’s focus on emotional intelligence may be just what the digital age needs.
