In early 2024, shortly after writing a post on Maples et al.'s "Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots," we also wrote a response to the journal. In it, we noted that Replika, the app they used for the study, was an AI companion app marketed for erotic role play. Maples et al. had failed to mention this little piece of context in their study, along with Maples's conflicts of interest.
As of November 2025, that response was finally published, along with their reply. Despite apparently taking a year to write, their reply is a mere 319 words and dodges the substance of our critique. In this second reply, we go through their response point by point and, in the process, show how both Maples and Luka (the company that owns Replika) have used the study in their advertising and public communications, greatly exaggerating and generalizing its already dubious findings as it suits them.