Character.ai
 | |
Type of site | Chatbot, artificial intelligence, deep learning |
|---|---|
| Available in | 31 languages |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Founder(s) | Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas |
| URL | character |
| Registration | Required |
| Launched | November 2021[1] |
Character.ai (also known as c.ai or Character AI) is a neural language model chatbot service that can generate human-like text responses and participate in contextual conversation. Constructed by previous developers of Google's LaMDA, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, the beta model was made available to use by the public in September 2022.[2][3] The beta model has since been retired on September 24, 2024, and can no longer be used.[4]
On May 11, 2023, character.ai announced character.ai+, a opt-in subscription plan marketed as $9.99 a month, that was marketed as including features such as skipping waiting rooms, fast messaging and responses, and access to a exclusion channel with faster support.[5]
This decision sparked anger and discontent within the community as waiting rooms and slow responses from the characters were originally announced as a temporary fix to server load issues,[6] only to now be shown as a permanent feature that could only be avoided by paying for character.ai+.
Users can create "characters", craft their "personalities", set specific parameters, and then publish them to the community for others to chat with. Many characters may be based on fictional media sources or celebrities, while others are completely original, some being made with certain goals in mind such as assisting with creative writing or being a text-based adventure game.[7][3]
In May 2023, a mobile app was released for both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which had over 1.7 million downloads within its first week.[8]
History
[edit]Character.ai was established in November 2021.[1] The company's co-founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, were both engineers from Google.[9] While at Google, the co-founders both worked on AI-related projects: Shazeer was a lead author on a paper that Business Insider reported in April 2023 "has been widely cited as key to today's chatbots",[10] and Freitas was the lead designer of an experimental AI at Google initially called Meena, which would later become known as LaMDA.[10]
Character.ai raised $43 million in seed funding at the time of its initial foundation in 2021.[11]
The first beta version of Character.ai's service was made available to the public in September 2022.[9] The Washington Post reported in October 2022 that the site had "logged hundreds of thousands of user interactions in its first three weeks of beta-testing".[9] It allowed users to create their own new characters, and to play text-adventure game scenarios where users navigate scenarios described and managed by the chatbot characters.[9]
Following a $150 million funding round in March 2023, Character.ai became valued at approximately $1 billion.[11]
As of January 2024, the site had 3.5 million daily visitors, with the vast majority of them being 16 to 30 years old.[12]
In 2024, Google hired Noam Shazeer, the CEO of Character.ai, and entered into a non-exclusive agreement to use Character.ai's technology.[13]
Software
[edit]
Character.ai's primary service is to provide users with the ability to have conversations with character AI chatbots that are based on fictional characters or real people (living or deceased).[14] The responses of these characters use data the chatbots gather from the internet about a person.[15] In addition to the chat feature, users can play text-adventure games where characters guide them through scenarios.[14] The company also provides a service that allows multiple users and AI chatbot characters to converse together at once in a single chat room.[16]
Character "personalities" are designed via descriptions from the point of view of the character and its greeting message, and further molded from conversations made into examples, giving its messages a star rating and modification to fit the precise dialect and identity the user desires.[17]
When a character sends back a response, the user can rate the response from 1 to 4 stars. The rating predominantly affects the specific character, but also affects the behavioral selection as a whole.[18]
Controversies
[edit]In May 2024, the family of Michael Schumacher won a legal suit against the magazine Die Aktuelle after it published an article which claimed to be an interview with the former Formula One driver but which was actually generated using Character.AI.[19]
In October 2024, the Washington Post reported that Character.AI had removed a chatbot which appeared to have been based on Jennifer Ann Crecente, a person who had been murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2006. The company had been alerted to the character by the deceased girl's father.[20] Similar reports from The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom noted that the company had also been prompted to remove chatbots based on Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old transgender girl murdered in 2023, and Molly Russell, a 14-year-old suicide victim.[21][22]
Also in October 2024, a Florida mother filed a lawsuit against Character.AI and Google, claiming that her 14-year-old son had taken his own life at the encouragement of a Character.AI chatbot which he had built up a relationship with over a period of months.[23][24] Following the death, Character.AI revised its disclaimer reminding users that AI characters are not real people,[23] reduced the likelihood of sensitive or suggestive content from bots used by minors, added a user notification when chat sessions exceed an hour. Character.ai has also deleted custom-made bots flagged as violating their terms. As a result of these changes, some users of the site complained about the bots feeling too restrictive and lacking personality.[25]
See also
[edit]- Boyfriend Maker – Dating simulator app
- ChatGPT – Chatbot developed by OpenAI
- Replika – AI chatbot app
- SimSimi – Chatbot app
References
[edit]- ^ a b Cai, Kennrick (October 11, 2023). "Character.AI's $200 Million Bet That Chatbots Are The Future Of Entertainment". Forbes. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
The pair founded Character.AI in November 2021, a year before public appetite for AI swelled when OpenAI released ChatGPT.
- ^ Tiku, Nitasha (October 7, 2022). "'Chat' with Musk, Trump or Xi: Ex-Googlers want to give the public AI". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 11, 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.
- ^ a b "'Chat' with Musk, Trump or Xi: Ex-Googlers want to give the public AI". The Spokesman-Review. Archived from the original on November 9, 2022. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
- ^ "The old/beta has been fully retired. Please use character.ai or the mobile app". character.ai. September 2024. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
- ^ "Introducing c.ai+ Supercharge Your Experience!". Character.AI Blog. May 11, 2023. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
- ^ "What is the Waiting Room?". character.ai. October 31, 2024. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
- ^ Marshall, Gunnell (November 6, 2022). "An Elon Musk chatbot tells Insider he wants to buy CNN, reinstate Trump on Twitter, and 'show people how the sausage gets made'". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 8, 2022. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
- ^ Perez, Sarah (May 31, 2023). "Character.AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup, tops 1.7M installs in first week".
- ^ a b c d Tiku, Nitasha (October 7, 2022). "'Chat' with Musk, Trump or Xi: Ex-Googlers want to give the public AI". Washington Post. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ a b Maxwell, Thomas (April 20, 2023). "A former Google researcher behind a seminal AI paper describes how the company lost a top chatbot visionary". Business Insider. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ a b Metz, Cade (March 23, 2023). "Chatbot Start-Up Character.AI Valued at $1 Billion in New Funding Round". The New York Times. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ "Character.ai: Young people turning to AI therapist bots". January 5, 2024. Retrieved October 17, 2024.
- ^ Heath, Alex (August 3, 2024). "Google takes another startup out of the AI race". The Verge. Retrieved August 6, 2024.
- ^ a b Tiku, Nitasha (October 7, 2022). "'Chat' with Musk, Trump or Xi: Ex-Googlers want to give the public AI". Washington Post. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ Heath, Ryan (June 4, 2023). "Character.ai bets on making AI chat fun". Axios. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ Zielinski, Radek (October 12, 2023). "Character.AI unveils group chat feature for paid subscribers". ReadWrite. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ "How Talking to an AI Video Game Character Made Me Cry". Kotaku Australia. January 4, 2023. Archived from the original on January 9, 2023. Retrieved January 9, 2023.
- ^ Character.ai. "Training a Character". Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
- ^ Nelson, Jason (May 23, 2024). "F1 Legend Michael Schumacher's Family Wins Lawsuit Over Faked AI Interview". Decrypt.
- ^ Wu, Daniel (October 15, 2024). "His daughter was murdered. Then she reappeared as an AI chatbot". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
- ^ Field, Matthew (October 30, 2024). "Digital clones of Brianna Ghey and Molly Russell created by 'manipulative and dangerous' AI". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved October 30, 2024.
- ^ Vallance, Chris (October 30, 2024). "'Sickening' Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey chatbots found online". BBC News. Retrieved October 30, 2024.
- ^ a b Hoffman, Kelsie (October 23, 2024). "Florida mother files lawsuit against AI company over teen son's death: "Addictive and manipulative" - CBS News". www.cbsnews.com.
- ^ Roose, Kevin (October 23, 2024). "Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen's Suicide?". The New York Times.
- ^ Franzen, Carl (October 23, 2024). "Character AI clamps down following teen user suicide, but users are revolting". VentureBeat. Retrieved October 31, 2024.