How this term appears here Erotic roleplay (ERP) shows up in this channel's material in the context of AI companions — apps like Nomi and Kindroid that people build ongoing relationships with. When NYU tech columnist Kevin Roose ran his month-long experiment creating 18 AI companions, a central question was where companion apps help and where they turn exploitative — and ERP is one of the behaviors that draws that line sharply. Roose distinguishes between using AI as a practice space versus a replacement for real relationships, and ERP sits at the edge of that boundary: it is the kind of interaction a companion app can offer that a general assistant like ChatGPT typically will not, and it is a major reason companion apps differ from chatbots like ChatGPT.