Character.AI: AI platform with all your favorite fictional, real characters
What's the story
Imagine a place where all your favorite personalities are assembled and ready to talk to you. Such a place exists, and it is called Character.AI.
It is an AI platform where you can have conversations with anyone from Super Mario to Albert Einstein to Elon Musk.
Character.AI has been growing in popularity. Let's see what the hype is about.
Context
Why does this story matter?
The ongoing AI revolution has thrown some gems our way. From market leader OpenAI's ChatGPT to the latest version of image-generator Midjourney, we have seen several interesting generative AI-based products.
ChatGPT's success led to the rise of multiple AI chatbots with different specializations. Character.AI is one of them.
It boasts something many chatbots don't have - a lot of characters.
Character.AI
Users can create fictional or real characters on Character.AI
Character.AI is an example of fanfiction in the age of AI. The platform allows you to create characters.
These characters can be based on fictional or real people (dead or alive). You can chat with any character on the site.
There are also chatbots dedicated to specific purposes. They will help you practice a new language or prepare for an interview, among other things.
Chat
Users may create a chat room with multiple characters
The platform has a slew of personalities and fictional characters. They are grouped under different categories, including 'Famous People,' 'Game Characters,' 'Anime' characters, etc.
You have the option to chat with one character or create a room with multiple personalities and have a group chat.
The chatbots are programmed to produce appropriate responses based on each character's attributes.
Learning
You can rate the character's responses
You can help characters evolve by rating their responses from one to four stars. If you're not a fan of the chatbot's response, you can change it by clicking the 'arrow' next to it.
Rating the character's response will help in refining its responses. Now, if you're creating a character, you can help the model understand your character's attributes through sample chats.
Information
There is an option to enable character voice
Character.AI also offers you speech-to-text generation. You simply have to click the microphone button in the chat box. If you want the character to speak back, you can enable the character's voice from the three-dotted menu on the top-right corner of the chat window.
App
Character.AI app was downloaded 1.7mn times in a week
Character.AI launched the mobile version of the AI platform on May 23. In less than a week, it garnered over 1.7 million new installs, making it one of the most popular AI apps.
On Android, it was downloaded more than 700,000 times within the first 48 hours. Character.AI's pull is not just about its capabilities.
It has something to do with its creators too.
Creators
It was created by former Google engineers
Character.AI was created by Noam Shazeer and Daniel Dei Freitas, two AI experts who previously helmed a team of researchers that built Google's LaMDA.
They left Google over its hesitance to launch AI chatbots. They founded Character Technologies in November 2021, the same year they left Google.
The company raised $150 million in its Series A funding at a valuation of $1 billion.