Character AI Review: How Convincing Can Speaking to AI Be?

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence has advanced enough to respond to human language and hold conversations. Virtual assistants and AI chatbots come to mind, and these are only getting more popular – ChatGPT, for example. But can artificial intelligence have a personality? The answer is yes. And Character AI is a chatbot platform that’s making that a reality.

Character AI lets users create their own personalized chatbots and chat to them like friends. Character AI calls them Characters, and they’re all unique – some created just for fun, others for more practical purposes. If you’ve ever wanted to create your own AI partner or feel like you’re chatting online with your favorite celebrity, Character AI is going to interest you.

Right here, we’ll explain what Character AI is, review what it offers, and provide use cases for how different people can benefit from using Character AI.

What is Character AI?

Character AI is a web application where users can create and chat with real or fictional characters as chatbots and have human like interactions with them. These chatbots, called Characters, can be original creations or Characters designed to imitate famous figures, fictional characters, or specialists in certain fields.

Character AI was released to the public in September 2022. It uses AI built on advanced machine learning and extensive language models, created by former Google developers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas.

Character AI review – what to expect?

Character AI is free to use, so you can visit the website and start chatting with your own characters right away. But before you do, it’s worth knowing what to expect. Here we review Character AI and everything it has to offer, zooming in on five key areas:

• The Characters on Character AI

• The chat experience

• The Character creation process

• User support and community

• User safety and privacy

So whether you’re curious about the Characters on Character AI, how creating Characters works, or how safe Character AI is for users, you’ll find everything you need to know in our review.

AI Characters

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You only have to visit the homepage to see that Character AI offers a unique variety of chatbots, including multiple Characters. There are various Character categories running along the top of the page, and clicking on a category only shows you a featured selection. Just some of the categories and Characters on Character AI include:

• AI assistants – life coaches, fitness coaches, dating coaches, novel writing assistants, character creation assistants, programming assistants, coding assistants

• Famous figures – actors, music artists, authors, politicians, historical characters

• Fictional characters – characters from movies, TV shows, books, video games, comics, and anime

• Image generating characters – characters that can AI-generate images for different purposes

• Language learning characters – characters designed to help users learn specific languages

So there really is a lot. And you can search for more Characters using the search function at the top-right corner of the page. All Characters on Character AI are created by users. This is the main reason there are so many.

And with everything from AI assistants and language learning chatbots to chatbots emulating famous figures and fictional characters, Character AI can be used for both entertainment and educational purposes.

Chat experience

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You can chat to any of the Characters for free right on the Character AI website. Although after sending a few messages, you’ll be asked to sign up to Character AI. This is also free. Once you click on a Character, the Character will greet you. You can respond by typing or using text-to-speech, then hitting “enter” on your keyboard or clicking the “send message” icon.

You can even upload images to send to the Character. So chatting to Characters on Character AI is easy, and you’ll find the chat interface familiar if you’ve used any other instant messaging app. During chats, you can rate each response out of four stars (as a registered user).

This is how you can help improve the Character chat experience, based entirely on what you think – whether you found the response Character-accurate or factually correct, for example. Character responses can also be regenerated by clicking the “>” icon on the right side of each message, then rated again.

As for the actual responses, most users will generally find that popular Characters on Character AI do a good job of emulating who they’re created after or what they’re supposed to “sound” like, by using natural language processing technology.

Despite that, users shouldn’t expect total accuracy character-wise, or even factually accurate responses. This is because all Characters on Character AI are user-created, so responses will largely depend on how they were created.

Character creation

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Creating Characters on Character AI is accessible for new users, as it offers “quick” Character creation in addition to “advanced” Character creation. You’ll need to sign up to create a Character, but this is free and also allows unlimited Character creation. Quick Character creation really is quick, as it involves just four inputs:

• Name – the name of your Character

• Greeting – an introduction for the Character, written from Character’s point of view

• Visibility – whether you want the Character to be public, unlisted, or private

• Avatar – an image for the Character (optional)

Advanced Character creation, on the other hand, is advanced. This is where you can type in short and long descriptions to give your Character traits, interests, a physical appearance, history, and more.

Long descriptions are written from the Character’s POV, and this also helps establish its tone of voice when responding. Once you’ve created a Character, you can teach it new information via chat and fine-tune its responses using the in-chat rating system.

Support and community

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A good thing about Character AI is that new users can interact with other members and receive help, support, and tips for Character creation through free guides and forum discussions. Character AI also has announcement, requests, and Character sharing sections on the website, as well as a social media-style feed displaying recent user posts that can be liked, shared, and commented on.

Overall, Character AI welcomes new users and provides plenty of help and support for using its AI technology. Through its support and rating system, Character AI also encourages users to improve the experience for everyone – so it’s constantly improving.

Safety and privacy

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On the whole, Character AI is a safe platform for users. There is an age requirement for when signing up, and NSFW content and swearing are against the current guidelines – both within chat and for Character creation.

As for privacy, Characters created by users can be made private if desired. Conversations with Characters on Character AI are also private and not visible to creators, and nor are creators allowed to “operate” their Characters.

AI use cases for Character.AI

Character AI isn’t like AI tools developed for a specific purpose – such as research, AI word generation, or workflow assistance. Which begs the question: What can Character AI be used for? At a glance, Character AI looks like a chatbot website made entirely for user entertainment. And there’s no doubt that it is entertaining.

But Character AI can also offer value to users, with benefits that go beyond quashing boredom and chatting to their favorite movie characters.

Character inspiration and creation

Character AI has Characters that are designed to assist character creators – both on Character AI and for mediums that include novels and video games. This can benefit authors of creative writing in two ways: fleshing out existing character profiles, and creating a chatbot based on their character’s personality, helping to “bring their character to life”.

Image generation

Character AI has Characters that are designed to help users with AI image generation. Like other AI image generation tools, users can ask these Characters to generate an array of digital images for them for different purposes. The only difference here is that the image generation is done within the chat interface.

Educational learning and self help

Character AI has Characters that are designed to educate users and offer advice. These include chatbots emulating life coaches, relationship counselors, and fitness gurus, as well as chatbots designed to teach users specific subjects, such as programming, coding, novel writing, or languages.

Conclusion

Character AI offers an incredibly personalized AI chatbot that users can strike up human like conversations with for entertainment, assistance, education, and self-help advice. These Characters are user-created, and Character AI makes it easy for new members to join in the community and learn the basics of Character creation.

Character AI is free to use, and offers free help guides as well as forums where users can engage with other members and share tips. It has safety guidelines to prevent NSFW content, as well as measures that make Character creations and conversations private. All in all, Character AI is a versatile chatbot platform that offers AI enthusiasts a host of reasons to get on board.

And with the growing user community and in-chat ratings system, which allows users to rate the responses of Characters, we can only see this AI technology getting better.

Frequently asked questions

What is Character AI used for?

Character AI is a platform where users can create and chat to custom-made chatbots, called Characters. Characters can be original creations or Characters designed to imitate fictional characters, famous figures, specialists in certain fields, and more.

Does Character AI have an app?

Character AI does not have an official app yet, but an official app is currently in development for iOS and Android. Users can still access Character AI on mobile devices, however, via mobile browsers that include Safari and Chrome.

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