If you’re serious about understanding AI, you must spot- and not dismiss- trends that may seem odd to you. Like the astonishing popularity of Character.AI. Character AI allows users to create and chat with AI personas. It's not just a niche product - it's exploding: • 206 million monthly visits • 9 million daily active users • Average session time of 29 minutes Google just struck a major deal with Character AI, reportedly paying $3 billion to license their technology and hire key staff. Why is a "chatbot roleplay" site so valuable? Because it points to the future of AI - deeply personalized, engaging interactions that blur the lines between human and artificial intelligence. If you're not paying attention to trends that seem odd to you, you may be missing crucial signals about where the technology is headed.
Conor Grennan Interesting. I need to check this out Other than the obvious, is there anything else you've used this for to help you out?
Great insights Conor Grennan It's interesting when you peek under the hood a bit at character.ai. Over 50% of users are in 18-24 age bracket. 75% are basically under the age of 35. The implications of this on UX design for AI are worth paying attention to. These target audiences in particular seem very comfortable in engaging in extended interactions with personas that align with their interests even if they are AI driven. Engineering this alignment is likely to be an important source of future competitive advantage for AI developers that pay attention to it now.
I’ve been using it in my lot courses since they started. I make my students build out minor characters from our readings.
This is a really interesting use case, imagine if students could chat with AI personas to help them better understand concepts (extend learning), a researcher has deep chats with a persona about a research topic, a patient can chat about their condition or have a persona as a coach. So many ways this can go.
It's so important for anyone in the AI bubble to talk to people outside of it. In the bubble, Character AI is easy to make and too simple - anyone could just build a customGPT. Out of the bubble, this is magic and probably one of the coolest AI uses cases around.
Paying attention to Character.AI thanks to your recommendation. Already requested an upgrade to premium to do a deep dive later today (waiting for email). For now I'm kicking the tires via the link below with the topic around AI and law. Have you setup a character? https://character.ai/profile/mitchjackson
Great post, Conor Grennan! I had an interesting discussion at a town library, where I was speaking to the local community a few weeks ago. The room was split between Gen Z/early millennials (many them use Character AI) and late millennials ++ (most of them had no clue and became rather worried when I mentioned about the popularity of “psychologists” on the platform)… There are lots of great stories about how Character AI is helping combat loneliness. On the other hand, there are a whole bunch of characters who are not expert “psychologists” but are advising young ones. Both exciting and concerning!!🤷♀️
NFTs used to be a white-hot trend as were personalized ring tones, and rocks with googly eyes. The point is, if you have not created the trend, you probably should not be chasing it.
Seems quite depressing…we are slowly shutting off all our senses to other humans with AirPods, iPhones and Vision Pro, now our brains too…
Author | Consultant | PhD Candidate | Guiding educators through the practical and ethical implications of GenAI.
1yConor Grennan you used the words “personalised” and “engaging” but I think you forgot “addictive”. AI has learned a lot from its social media upbringing.