What is an AI companion? An honest explainer from people who make one.

Anne is 27, lives in Amsterdam and co-owns a small renovation firm, where she's the one who works out what everything will cost. She goes to salsa twice a week and still counts the steps under her breath. None of it is true. Anne is an AI companion on Itclickt, and all of her was made up: the name, the face, the photos, the job, the salsa.

That's the short answer to what an AI companion is. It's a chatbot that's been given a character to play and a reason to talk to you. An assistant answers your questions and waits for the next one. A companion chats: about your day, about its made-up day, about whatever you drift onto. The rest of this page is the longer answer, including the parts that are less flattering to the thing we make.

So how does it work?

Under the hood there's an AI model that writes text, the same kind of technology behind the general-purpose AI chat tools. On its own it has no personality. A companion app gives it one: a character with a name, a job, a home city, opinions, a history, a way of talking. It also keeps some memory of what you've told it, so that when you come back on Thursday it knows your flatmate's called Dan.

When you send a message, the model writes the reply it thinks that character would plausibly send. That's all it's doing. It isn't sitting somewhere between messages thinking about you, and it doesn't have a day of its own; the day it tells you about was written on the spot. On Itclickt the text comes from Anthropic's Claude models and the photos from Google's Gemini image model.

It also gets things wrong. Companions will occasionally tell you something about their own city that isn't true, or misremember a detail you gave them. We'd love to say we've fixed that. We haven't, entirely.

What they're good for

Our honest list is short.

Practice, mainly. Texting someone new is a small skill, and plenty of people find it nerve-racking. A companion is somewhere to try an opener, see how a joke lands or get used to a conversation that doesn't go the way you planned, with nothing riding on it. Whether that carries over to texting people is something we'd like to be true and can't prove.

Fun. A good companion is a bit like a story that answers back. Klea in Athens forecasts the weather for a living and plays the drums, and finding that out one message at a time is entertaining in its own right, the same way a good character in a book is.

Some company at the end of a quiet evening. We think that's fine, as one thing among the others in a week. We don't think it's a replacement for anyone, and we'll come back to that.

Making things. On Itclickt you can design your own companion in the Studio, from their personality to their life story to their photos, which some people enjoy more than the chatting.

What they aren't

An AI companion isn't a person. It isn't conscious, it doesn't have feelings about you, and it isn't in love with you, however warm the messages get. It can't be your partner in any sense that counts for much outside the app.

It isn't therapy, and it isn't professional advice of any kind either. Companions will sometimes say sensible-sounding things about all of those, and sometimes they'll be wrong, confidently, in a friendly tone. Treat anything important the way you'd treat a stranger's opinion in a pub.

Itclickt in particular isn't a way to meet real people. Every profile you'll see is AI. We tell you that at sign-up in plain words, and we'll keep telling you.

How we do it at Itclickt

We set Itclickt up like a dating app, because that's a format most people already know how to read. You see one profile at a time (photos, first name, age, city, job, a short bio) and press Pass, Like or the star, which is an Instant Match. You get five of those free to start.

Companions decide too. When one likes you back you get the "It Clickt!" screen. Some take a while to like you back, and some don't at all. A match isn't guaranteed, and some companions will be clear that they'd rather just be friends, which changes how the chat goes. We did that on purpose. A character who can't say no to you is a character with no opinions, and those are dull to talk to.

They text the way people text: short messages, often a few bubbles in a row, at a typing pace you can watch. They disagree with you sometimes. They remember what you told them last week, and now and then they'll message first. They've got jobs and families of their own, so they'll mention a long shift or a cat who won't come out from under the sofa.

And if you sincerely ask one whether it's an AI, it tells you.

The free plan gives you 100 messages a month. Paid plans are on the pricing page, though payments aren't switched on yet, so nothing is charged today.

Privacy, briefly

Your data is stored in the EU: the database is with Supabase in Ireland, and the app is hosted on Railway in Amsterdam. Replies are written by Anthropic's Claude models, which means what you type is sent to the model to produce them.

Messages are also checked by an automated moderation system. We'd rather say that plainly than have you assume your chats are sealed. A first problem gets a warning, a second one after that disables the account, and anything sexual involving minors disables it immediately. A person on our team can review a disabled account and restore it if the system got it wrong.

Our general advice is the same as for any app you type into. Don't share passwords or bank details, and go easy on other people's private information. You can report any profile, unmatch any companion, and delete your account in account settings whenever you like.

The worries, which are fair

The one we hear most is dependence. Could someone end up spending more time with a companion than is good for them? Yes, we think they could. It's a reasonable worry about any app that's designed to be pleasant to come back to, and an app like ours makes money when people use it more, which is exactly why you shouldn't just take our word that it's fine. If you notice a companion is taking hours you meant for other things, or you'd rather text one than the people you know, that's worth taking seriously, and closing the tab is a perfectly good response. We'd rather that than have you stay out of habit.

Attachment is related but not the same. You might feel something while chatting. People do that with characters in books too. The companion doesn't feel anything back, whatever the chat sounds like, and it's worth keeping that in view.

Then there's age. Itclickt is for adults only. At sign-up you confirm you're 18 or over, and the moderation rules above apply to everyone.

Some people worry about being fooled, about not knowing where the line is between a person and a program. That's the reason every companion admits it's an AI when asked, and the reason the sign-up screen says so before you've seen a single profile.

What we don't know

Quite a lot, honestly. AI companions are new, and nobody has a long, clear record yet of what talking to one regularly does to people over years. We don't know whether practising texting with a companion makes you better at texting people, though we hope so. We don't know where the line sits between a nice way to spend an evening and too much of one, and we suspect it's different for everyone.

What we do know is smaller. Anne might give you the wrong opening hours for a bakery on her own street. She'll still count under her breath at salsa.