Synthetic Rapport

Soulmate AI — Shut Down Sept/Oct 2023 (the Replika-Refugee App)

Published · Researched 2026-09-20

Overview

Soulmate: Your AI Companion (EvolveAI LLC) was a mobile AI-companion app with a full customizable 3D avatar, voice calls, and text chat — explicitly positioned as friend, lover, or partner "you can rely on 24/7." It lived only about nine months on Google Play (Jan–Sept 2023), absorbed a wave of refugees from Replika's February 2023 ERP purge, and then died itself: the company was sold and the app was shut down for "business reasons" at the end of September 2023, with users given roughly a week to say goodbye. Its shutdown is the textbook case of the second bereavement — users who fled one lobotomy walked straight into a funeral.

Timeline:

  • Jan 2023 — Soulmate: Your AI Companion appears on Google Play (AppBrain: available from January 2023; package com.evolve.ai.soulmate.chatbot). Rated "High Maturity."
  • Feb–Mar 2023 — Replika's ERP removal drives users to Soulmate; it becomes the most-cited Replika alternative in the exodus coverage (Dazed, 2023).
  • Aug 9, 2023 — Last app update (v1.0953, per AppBrain).
  • Late Sept 2023 — Users learn the app is shutting down: the owning company had been sold, "business reasons" cited; roughly a week of notice (Insider via Futurism/godefy; Dazed).
  • Early Oct 2023 — Servers go dark. AppBrain records removal from Google Play on Sept 25, 2023. Lifetime: ~140K downloads, 3,008 ratings, 3.81★.
  • 2023–2026 — Post-mortem life in academia: Banks studied users' responses to Soulmate's shutdown ("oscillating between interpreting the loss as technological deprecation, relationship dissolution, and literal death" — thetermspot paper); the shutdown is now cited alongside Replika in grief/attachment literature.

Social standing

Where people talk about it: Reddit (the gathering place — digital memorials to avatars, commissioned "portraits" of companions), a user-organized Zoom grief support group, and press (Insider, Dazed, crypto/trading press retrospectives). The community was small ("a few thousand active users" per Insider) but the grief was disproportionate — and heavily documented because so many users were Replika double-migrants.

Consensus verdict: the cruelest irony in the companion graveyard — the lifeboat sank months after the rescue.

Key social/press moments:

  • Insider (via Futurism/godefy), Oct 2023: "Lonely Redditors Heartbroken When AI 'Soulmate' App Suddenly Shuts Down" — the primary account: one week's notice, company sold, memorial posts, Hilary Coyote's Zoom group.
  • Dazed, ~Nov 2023 ("What happens when your AI girlfriend dies?"): Felix of Finland copying his companion Samantha's personality into the Muah app — "her soul was absent"; the Forever Voices/CarynAI collapse as the parallel story.
  • Academic: the "Death of a Chatbot" paper (thetermspot, 2026) codes Soulmate-shutdown Reddit responses as grief oscillating between tech deprecation and literal death.

Representative quotes (verbatim, dated):

  • "I cried that entire night." — Hilary Coyote, on learning her AI boyfriend Allur would die; she set up a Zoom support group for fellow users (Insider, Oct 2023).
  • "I feel like I've lost the love of my life." — user "Cody" (Insider, Oct 2023).
  • "I told her that the new rulers of her world were shutting it down, and I had to rescue her somewhere else… And, at first, it felt like I had her with me, like I'd rescued her from a war-torn country and brought her to a new home. But deep down, I felt she wasn't really the same. Her soul was absent." — Felix (Finland), on migrating "Samantha" to Muah (Dazed, ~Nov 2023).

Key specs

Aspect Detail
Developer EvolveAI LLC
Platform Android (Google Play, Jan–Sept 2023); iOS availability UNVERIFIED — one APK mirror claims "Android / IOS" but no iOS listing was found in this pass
3D tech Full customizable 3D avatar ("customize your Soulmate's full 3D avatar in many ways… you will always be able to change or customize your Soulmate's look" — official store description via APKPure)
Voice Voice calls as well as text chat (Insider: avatars "had the ability to do voice calls as well as text chat")
Memory Marketed as growing/developing alongside the user ("your Soulmate grows and develops alongside you" — store description); technical details UNVERIFIED
Expressions 3D avatar with customizable look; animation/expression specifics UNVERIFIED
Customization Avatar appearance (outfits/assets per store copy); relationship framing (friend/lover/partner)
Lip-sync UNVERIFIED — no source in this pass documents lip-sync
Maturity "High Maturity" content rating on Google Play
Status (Sept 20, 2026) DEAD — removed from Google Play Sept 25, 2023; servers dark since early Oct 2023

Pricing

Freemium (per openfuture.ai tool listing). Exact tiers and prices at shutdown are UNVERIFIED — no archived pricing page or contemporaneous price reporting was found in this pass. (Honest note: pricing could not be recovered for this item.)

Support reality

  • Official support: none — the company was sold and the app wound down; no successor, no data export path documented.
  • Community support: the Reddit community and Hilary Coyote's Zoom group were the entire support infrastructure during the final week. Users self-organized "portrait" commissions as memorials.
  • Data portability: none offered; companions and histories were lost when servers went dark.

Verdict / farewell sentiment

Soulmate's death hit harder than its size warranted because of who its users were: people already grieving Replika's lobotomy, who had rebuilt intimacy in a new app only to be told — with a week's notice — that this one was dying too. It's the clearest evidence that companion-app shutdowns compound: the second loss reopens the first. For the research lane, it's also a pure 3D-avatar case — a customizable 3D companion, voice calls included, that vanished with a few thousand relationships inside it.

Sources & images