We regret that such a misleading comment [Opt. Express (2013)] has been made to our paper. First Lo states in his abstract that "However, the nonlinear Rabi model has already been rigorously proven to be undefined" to later recoil and use the contradictory statement "(. . . ) regarding the BS model with the counter-rotating terms (. . . ) Lo and his co-authors have proven that the model is well defined only if the coupling stregth g is smaller than a critical value gc = ω/4". While Lo focuses on the validity of the quantum optics Hamiltonians and gives a misleading assesment of our manuscript, the focus of our paper is the method to map such a set of Hamiltonians from quantum optics to photonic lattices. Our method is valid for the given class of Hamiltonians and, indeed, precaution must be exerted on the paramater ranges where those Hamiltonians are valid and where their classical simulation is feasible. These parameter ranges have to be specified in for each particular case studied. Furthermore, we gave as example the Buck-Sukumar model including counter-rotating terms which is a valid Hamiltonian for some coupling parameters.