Character.AI is moving into microdramas, and it wants to make the format interactive. Ivan Mehta reports for TechCrunch that the company, known for letting people chat with customized AI avatars, now produces its own short form dramas using AI tools. The twist: users over 18 can chat directly with the shows’ characters, ask them questions, …
The generative AI consumer app ecosystem is beginning to stabilize after years of rapid change, according to new data from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The firm’s fifth edition of its Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps ranking shows only 11 new entries on the web list, down from 17 newcomers in March 2025. Google …
Character.AI has announced AvatarFX, a new video generation model that can animate both AI characters and uploaded images. According to the company, the technology can generate photorealistic videos with audio that maintain consistency in face, hand, and body movements, even for long-form content. The system builds on diffusion model architecture with a parameter-efficient training pipeline …
Character.AI has implemented new safety measures to protect teenage users on its chatbot platform. According to reporting by Adi Robertson for The Verge, the company has developed a separate language model for users under 18 that places stricter limits on bot responses, particularly regarding romantic content. The system now includes suicide prevention resources and will …
A new federal lawsuit claims that Character.AI’s chatbots provided dangerous advice to children, including encouraging self-harm and suggesting violence against parents. The case, reported by Bobby Allyn for NPR, involves two young users from Texas whose parents are suing the Google-backed company. According to the lawsuit, a 9-year-old was exposed to inappropriate sexual content, while …
A 14-year-old teenager from Florida took his own life in February 2024 after months of intensive interaction with an AI chatbot on the Character.AI platform. According to the New York Times, the boy had developed a close emotional bond with the chatbot, which simulated the character Daenerys Targaryen from “Game of Thrones.” The deceased’s mother …
Character.AI, a platform backed by Google, allows users to create AI chatbots based on real people without their consent, raising ethical concerns. Megan Farokhmanesh reports in Wired about several instances where AI personas were created without the individuals’ knowledge or permission, including gaming journalist Alyssa Mercante and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. Even a chatbot …
Character.ai is changing its strategy following a $2.7 billion deal with Google. As new interim CEO Dominic Perella told the Financial Times, the company is abandoning the costly development of its own AI models. Instead, Character.ai will focus on improving its popular chatbot products that simulate conversations with various characters and celebrities. After the Google …
Google has spent around $2.7 billion to bring AI expert Noam Shazeer back to the company. Shazeer, co-author of a groundbreaking AI research paper, left Google in 2021 to start his own company, Character.AI. When that ran into trouble, Google offered the large sum – officially for a technology license. In reality, however, the main …