Google hires Character.AI co-founders, signs new licensing deal
Noam Shazeer, the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI, is making a return to Google. Shazeer had previously worked at Google where he led the team that developed LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), a language model utilized in conversational AI tools. He left in 2021 to establish his own start-up, Character.AI, which is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm. Now, he will be rejoining as part of the Google's DeepMind team.
Shazeer is not alone in his return
Alongside Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas, another co-founder of Character.AI and several other employees from the start-up are also transitioning to Google. This move is part of a broader strategy by Google to acquire top talent from Character. AI. In addition to this personnel acquisition, Google has secured a non-exclusive licensing agreement for the use of technology developed by Character. AI.
Future plans and leadership changes
Character.AI, which has raised over $150 million in funding, largely from a16z in March 2023, announced that their goal of personalized superintelligence required a full stack approach. This includes pre-training models and post-training them to power unique experiences. However, with more pre-trained models now available, they see an advantage in using third-party LLMs alongside their own. Following Shazeer's departure, Dominic Perella will serve as interim CEO at the start-up while most of the staff remains at Character.AI.
Character.AI allows you to create and interact with characters
Character.AI is a chatbot app that leverages AI to develop virtual characters capable of conversation, task performance, and displaying emotions and personalities. The app generates text responses intended to be more human-like and realistic. Users can create their own characters or interact with existing ones, including fictional/anime characters, historical figures, and celebrities. Additionally, they can engage in text-adventure game scenarios managed by the chatbot characters. Character.AI is avalable on Android, iOS, and the web.
