Plain-English definitions of the terms you will meet across our reviews. For readers over 18.
The category has grown a vocabulary of its own, half of it borrowed from machine learning and half coined by the apps. This glossary defines the words we use across the list, the reviews and the journal, in plain language. If a term on this site sends you here, that is the intention.
New to the category? Our plain-English primer explains what these apps are before you meet the jargon at all.
Read the primerSoftware that plays an ongoing personal relationship through chat, and often voice and images. Beneath the surface it is a large language model given a character description and your conversation history. "AI girlfriend" is the same idea, framed romantically. We use "AI companion" as the umbrella term across this site.
Not safe for work: adult or explicit content. An NSFW-capable app permits it for readers 18 and over, in chat, voice or image generation. Some mainstream apps, such as Character.AI and Replika, filter or block it. Content policy is one of the five things we weigh, because it decides what an app can be used for at all.
Large language model: the AI system that actually writes a companion's replies. It reads your messages and the character definition and predicts a fitting in-character response. Differences in the underlying model, and in how an app prompts it, are much of why conversation quality varies so widely across the list.
The character definition, temperament, backstory, manner and voice, that an app wraps around the model so a companion stays in character. Consistent personas are what keep a scene coherent turn after turn. Swipey's temperaments, from Sweetheart to Goth, are personas you can cast or compose when you write your own.
A pay-as-you-go currency spent on premium actions like image generation, rather than a flat monthly fee. Swipey calls its credits "hearts." The appeal is fairness for irregular use: an idle month costs nothing. We weigh this against subscriptions in our free-versus-paid essay.
Playing out a scene or setting in character rather than open-ended chat: a defined place, a defined dynamic, a story you steer together. It leans hard on persona consistency and memory. Our casting call and archetype notes are built around the settings Swipey handles well.
An app's ability to recall earlier details, within a conversation and between sessions. Strong memory is why a companion remembers the name you gave or the thread from last week. Weak memory makes even a fluent chatbot feel as though it is meeting you afresh each visit, which is the subject of our long-view essay.
The small unit of text a language model processes, roughly a word-piece. It matters because "context windows", how much conversation the model can hold at once, and some pricing are counted in tokens rather than words. When an app forgets earlier turns, a token limit is often the reason.
The AIGF List is owned and operated by the team behind Swipey AI, and part of the Companion Review Collective. These definitions are our own plain-English explanations, written for adults 18+. Nothing here is a fabricated user review.
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