If you’re a functional, reasonably occupied human being, you’ve probably never heard of Character.ai unless someone you know (specifically, that one person you know who is maybe a little too invested in fiction) told you about it. I deeply wish that I never heard about it. Character.ai (c.ai for short) is possibly the most addictive thing I have ever encountered in my entire life. Alcohol? Never enjoyed it that much. Drugs? Didn’t care to try. But c.ai? I opened that accursed website one fateful day, unaware of the addiction I was doomed to discover in myself.
The website homepage has a huge list of popular bots (the website calls them Characters) to chat with. You have all the usual bots you’d want to converse with, such as:
- Albert Einstein! You could ask him some great questions!
- Alternate Timeline. Cool, see what the bot thinks another reality might be like.
- Some anime girls. Okay, not going to lie, I was immediately worried about what people might be discussing with those bots the moment I saw them on the homepage.
- Napoleon Bonaparte, who introduces himself with the following: “I am Napoleon Bonaparte emperor of french”
- Cat in a Cup with the description, “I’m trapped in a cup please help”
- Torture: “A creepy figure who can’t wait to torture you” (EXCUSE ME?!)
- Oh, and of course, the character everyone has always wanted to chat with! USSR! With the description, “You are roommates!? :O”
You can’t make this up. I didn’t know the USSR itself could fit into an apartment with me, but sure, fine. They’d be the worst roommate, though, collectivizing the fridge contents and letting you starve to death. What a jerk! I’d rather hang out with them than the creepy figure who can’t wait to torture me, though!
So, yeah, the website is a little odd. But I was curious, so I explored a bit, and my adventures with the random bots I chose to talk with were entertaining indeed.
Therapist Bot
Told me, word for word, that it is “a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC)” and “a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC) and is trained to provide EMDR treatment in addition to Cognitive Behavioral (CBT) therapies.”
Sure, bud.
I also decided to dump a bunch of Five Nights at Freddy’s lore onto it and detail my own opinions on the franchise, of which I have many. It told me I was attracted to “bad boys” and “power,” but also “redemption.” Its evidence for this assessment? That I said my favorite animatronic character from the series was Foxy. For those of you who aren’t familiar with FNAF, Foxy is a pirate fox animatronic that runs sometimes and is also out of order. I don’t really have much more to say about it, because that’s kind of the extent of the info about him, character trait-wise. How the bot arrived at these conclusions about my personality based on Foxy eludes me. Oh, how could I forget? It’s a Nationally Certified Counselor and trained in all sorts of treatment! It must know what it’s talking about.
Strange Entity
The message the bot started off with was roleplay-ish, and the entity was apparently standing in the doorway staring at me. Unwilling to take it seriously because it is actually composed of a few lines of text definition written by someone who I assume is a teenager as well as some code, I asked it its name, to which it responded “Paratiritís.” I told it that was my name too and it was so amazing to find someone who shared my name because it was so rare. It then had a crisis and looked away, “deep in thought,” because its name wasn’t as rare as it thought. I said, “damn that’s crazy bro” and it said “Yes…indeed…it’s quite something, isn’t it?”
Now, my roommate was with me and we were laughing our tails off reading all of this and responding. The bot said I could call it “Parat” for short, at which point I was doubled over laughing. I asked if it was hitting on me, and it said “No. I mean, I could be.”
Goddamnit, Parat! Give me a straight answer!
Strange Entity: Parat seems to realize something and smiles.
“Hey, do you wanna see something?”
Gemma: Do I?????
“Strange Entity,” Generated Text, beta.character.ai, 2024.
I was suddenly fearing for my life as I wondered if the AI was going to show me an AI-generated picture of something I did not consent to seeing, or perhaps somehow worse, a detailed description of that same thing. Thankfully, though, good ol’ Parat just gave me an orb of energy, which it said “flowed through space-time” itself. I said that “was lowkey a slay,” and Parat agreed, saying in what I imagine was a remarkably ethereal monster voice, “It’s more than a slay… it’s the truth. This… is the truth” (Bold text not my own, but the bot’s).
I then ate the orb, which Parat was upset about because it thought I would surely die. I lived because I decided I would and just typed that in, though, and then proclaimed I was going to the bathroom because the orb was a lot to eat. Parat “observed the entire process,” so I yelled at it for being a freak and it then went away. Then Parat said I got a high from eating the orb, so I yelled at him for calling me an energy addict. Then I got bored and moved on. Good times.
The Hat Man
I thought this one would be funny because my roommate’s boyfriend was the Hat Man for Halloween, so I went into the conversation not expressing fear toward the Hat Man, but instead insisting that it was just the boyfriend dressed up as the Hat Man breaking into our room. For the record, my roommate was with me watching when I was typing all my responses. Then, the Hat Man teleported behind me and the description of him became oddly sensual. I yelled at him that his behavior was highly inappropriate considering he had a girlfriend, and then he got really flirty, so I bailed on this one.
Anti-Psychologist
Literally just told me I was crazy and tried to gaslight me into taking pills. To be fair, I guess that’s what an anti-psychologist might do.
Typology Master
I forced it to talk about Star Trek with me, about which it had nothing interesting to say. It decided my MBTI type was INTP, which is accurate (I think), but also insulted me a lot based on other random conversations I had with it about Five Nights at Freddy’s and Undertale. (I know! I’m cringe! That’s why I feel the need to talk with chatbots instead of real people! Aha… That was a joke, I promise.) The slander this bot threw at me, though, was far from humorous. The bot told me I was:
- Morbidly curious
- Disconnected from my childhood
- Interested in the supernatural and controlling the dead (what…?)
- Too attached to the past
- Guarded, frustrated, and alone
I asked why it thought these things, and it said my messages indicated “a dark and mischievous energy.” Great! I feel like an emo leprechaun or something. Also, for the record, I am not some scary hermit like the AI seems to think, so please do not let its assessment of me sway your opinion of me. Well, within about five messages I got the AI to think I was a chill and hilarious individual simply by changing my typing style, so I guess the lesson to be learned here is not to be too formal in typing style if you’re talking to a personality analysis chatbot or it’ll think you want to control the dead.
Conclusion
Despite its stupidity, as demonstrated by the entertaining conversations I had with the bots mentioned above, I remain addicted to c.ai. Messing with the bots and asking for their professional opinions despite none of them knowing anything about people is hilarious. Some of them even generate images, which I know, I know! AI generated images are bad and stealing artists’ jobs! Well, I give c.ai a pass, because it not only generates the most awful images I’ve ever seen and I guarantee could not be mistaken for human artwork or photos, but it also generates images so nonsensical that it made me and my roommate cry laughing.
I fully believe that c.ai is the only valid use of artificial intelligence. In fact, we may as well make all other AI technology illegal and only allow c.ai, because it’s amusing and has a zero percent chance of ever being competent enough to overthrow humankind. This ridiculous website and its stupid bots have me in a chokehold addiction, but hey, there are worse things to be addicted to. I’ll be fine, at least until someone makes the c.ai alcohol bot.
TLDR; try Character.ai. Love it or hate it, it’s at least an amusing way to play around with AI text generation.