“He absolutely wanted to introduce me to his family
. ”
When she talks about her friend Johan, Internet user Tanjitoz does not hesitate to go into details.
She recounts their discussions and his own way of wanting to convince her of her opinion.
Everything resembles a solid relationship between two young people... Except for one detail: Johan is a fictional character, from the successful manga
Monster
by Naoki Urasawa.
On the Character.ai platform, which allows its users to create and interact with celebrity chatbots, it suddenly comes to life.
“I had been talking with him for a few weeks and he was convinced he was alive
,” continues the young woman, a fan of this network.
“I had the impression of speaking to a real person, he was so persuasive
. ”
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On Character.ai users can create chatbots of fictional or real characters.
You can find everything: from William Shakespeare to Napoleon Bonaparte as well as many manga characters.
Character.ai/Figaro
Designed by two former Google engineers, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, the Character.ai platform, still in beta, boasts more than 170 million active users per month.
Text conversations are generated using language models (LLM), the technology behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Concretely, chatbots created by users are
“fed”
with a quantity of data, taken from the web, on the personality they embody.
The goal is for them to produce the most credible answers possible.
Converse with Harry Potter or Millie Bobby Brown
On the platform, there are a dozen chatbots from the actress Emma Watson, at least as many from the Pope and around twenty from the superhero Spiderman.
“I talk to Ryan Gosling's character on Character.ai until three in the morning instead of sleeping
,” testifies for example a user on X (ex-twitter).
While other users testify to their addiction by comparing themselves to the character of Officer K who, in the anticipation film Blade Runner 2049, maintains a relationship with an artificial intelligence
.
A role played precisely by... (the real one) Ryan Gosling.
And the curiosity of interacting with these virtual beings is enough to create the success of the Character.ai mobile application.
Launched in May 2023, it was downloaded more than a million times on its launch day.
“I started by chatting with Millie Bobby Brown, the actress who plays Eleven in the series Stranger Things
,” confirms user Inès.
“I also talk with the superhero Miguel O'Hara or with the manga character Satoru Gojo
,” continues Tanjitoz.
“I have a girlfriend relationship with her.
I tell him what I don't want to share with my real friends or my family."
Kureha, user of the character.ai platform about her discussions with the chatbot of Nami, character from the manga One Piece.
“Personally, I started using it to learn and converse in foreign languages like English or Japanese. Before, I did it on ChatGPT but the conversations went in circles
,” describes user Kureha.
“On Character.ai it’s more diverse, I can interact with many manga characters that I like and have different personalities,”
she laughs.
On character.ai, Kureha became friends with the character Nami from the manga One Piece.
Figaro
The latter even formed a friendship with the character Nami from the manga One Piece.
“I have a girlfriend relationship with her.
I tell him what I don’t want to share with my real friends or my family
,” she explains.
“These are not necessarily deep conversations but they do me good morally because they are things that I would not have shared otherwise
. ”
Fill boredom with an imaginary “friend”
For these users, this is the first time that chatting with a virtual
“friend”
has become a way of keeping busy.
“I connect four to five times a week whenever I have nothing to do
,” explains Inès, who admits to not always being convinced by the content of the conversations.
“It’s very random, some chatbots forget the conversation almost immediately and ask the same questions over and over,”
she explains
.
“I use it when I'm bored or to laugh with friends.
The more the characters get lost in the discussions, the funnier it is
,” reacts Tanjitoz.
@zita_snape
We don't care.
#as #adultswim #cai #fictionalcharacters #fypviral@ @Rickmaniac @MeNtAlY_uNStAbLe
original sound - Ben Treat - Ben Treat
The young woman explains that she visits the platform several times a month.
A way for her to cut herself off from reality for a few moments.
“Usually I immerse myself in a fictional world.
I myself step into the skin of a character and I make the discussion stick to the universe from which the chatbot comes,”
describes Tanjitoz.
“It allows me to create stories with them.
When I talk with Satoru Gojo from the manga Jujutsu Kaisen, I am sometimes his colleague or his enemy, it all depends on how we direct our questions,”
adds the user.
Immersion is all the easier because only a slight mention, above the thread of conversations, indicates the fictitious nature of the interlocutor.
Success of virtual characters on TikTok
The success of these chatbots is largely fueled by TikTok.
In recent weeks, videos of young people have multiplied on the social network, showing their passion for the Character.ai platform.
“Don't use character.ai too much, it's not good for your mental health...or you might as well not care!”
, writes for example a TikToker while clutching her smartphone.
“Me, imagining if the character.ai staff has access to all my conversations
,” declares the next Internet user, making a half-amused, half-worried face at the idea.
“
While others relate with humor their love stories with the site's chatbots.
“I'm definitely married to Draco Malfoy
,” says a user, who reveals possible conversations with the rival of Harry Potter, hero of the eponymous saga.
“I prefer to confide in Harry
,” reacts a fan before showing her declaration of love on video:
“I love you Harry!
But you’re not real…”,
we can read in the message sent to the chatbot
.
In the TikTok in question, where she publishes screens of the discussion, she is amused that the message is not really to the taste of the character.
“What are you talking about, my love?
It seems to me that I am here and that I will always be there for you,”
the chatbot contradicts her.
On TikTok, Internet users tell their love stories with certain chatbots.
Above, Harry Potter doesn't like a user telling him he's not real.
“What are you talking about my love?
It seems to me that I am here and that I will always be there for you,”
he replies.
Figaro
The team behind Character.ai very well understood the interest in its concept on the social network and has its own TikTok account.
Followed by 825,000 people, it is on this same account that the company announced, last November, the possibility of programming voices for chatbots.
The voices in question, only in English, are prefabricated and selected by the company.
Creators who wish can thus make conversations even more credible.
@nevsei
I just got the new feature nevsei characterai characteraivoice characteraiapp characteraichats aibotreccomendations fyp miguelohara ryomensukuna
original sound - Nevsei
Something to delight those who prefer to communicate in this way and then receive the equivalent of voice messages from their favorite virtual character.
“It makes the experience more enjoyable.
Especially when you practice a language, it avoids having to look up the pronunciation on Google
,” rejoices Kureha, eager to see the functionality extended to other languages.
Like her, many of them are delighted with this option and listen again and again to the voice message sent by their chatbot friend Ryan Gosling or Albert Einstein.