Character AI – How to make your own AI Character

The quirky cousin of ChatGPT.

Funmi Looi Somoye

Funmi Looi Somoye

Create your personalized AI character effortlessly.

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Character AI is an artificial intelligence app that allows you to make and chat with AI Characters! Similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT you can chat with these AI chatbots freely online. The characters are surprisingly human-like and fluid meaning you can really go to town with the conversations you have with them. What makes Character AI unique is that users can generate their own chatbot for others to enjoy. The platform allows you to play about with character creation, shaping the bot’s personalities and setting specific parameters so they take on a certain persona.

What is Character AI?

On the official website, you’ll be able to find loads of useful chatbots such as interviewers, programming helpers and writing assistants. But, wait there’s more. You can also check out their official guide on character creation called the Character Book, which outlines all the character’s attributes. Software engineers call these AI characters “agents”. These agents use a type of AI neural network called large language models (LLMs). This is also the same tech used by ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard. It’s the LLM that handles the natural language processing (NLP) and sends the text response back to you, the user.

As you would expect, there are some fictional characters and ‘celebrities’ on the platform too. Under the ‘Famous’ tab you can find some high-profile people such as Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, and Pikachu.

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What’s also pretty cool is that users can create group chats containing multiple characters. Not only are you able to chat with multiple characters at once, but they will also start chatting with each other, allowing for really engaging experiences.

For a bit of background, Character AI was created by former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas. The chatbots are based on neural large language models and use machine learning to generate words to strike a conversation. By using complex algorithms and machine learning, the character’s personality, emotions, and purposes get taken into account to help them behave like real people. They start these contextual conversations with a greeting message, and the rest is up to you!

Overall, creating (and sometimes deleting) an AI character is part of a larger trend in the world of artificial intelligence that is working towards more interactive and responsive technology, with generative AI becoming increasingly more human.

The platform is relatively new and it only made its debut in September of last year. You’ll be happy to hear that the platform is free to use and doesn’t require a registered account.

How to make an AI character

Using the chatbot platform is easy to do and you do not need to make an account to try the platform out. Here are the steps to get started:

  1. Head to beta.character.ai
  2. A pop-up ‘welcome’ window will appear introducing you to the platform. At this point click ‘accept’.
  3. Now you’re in! Click on a character you would like to talk to. There’s a lot to choose from here so be sure to make use of the character category tabs at the top of the window.
  4. Start chatting. Without a registered account you will be limited to how long you can chat with these characters. Making an account is easy and you can sign up using a Google or Facebook account, or by providing an email address.

This language learning roleplay bot has followed in the footsteps of OpenAI’s ChatGPT app by recently releasing its own mobile app for iOS and Android.

Is Character.AI free?

Yes! Character AI is free to use. All you have to do is register a free account to gain access to Character AI’s chatbots.

Although Character.AI is free, they have recently released a premium program called c.ai+ which offers you perks such as early access to new features, priority access to chats and also faster response times from characters. The price is $9.99/month. It is worth noting that c.ai+ is only available on the website, not on the mobile app.

Final Thoughts

Character AI seems like the fun, quirky cousin of ChatGPT. It has a free plan, and does include NSFW filters to minimise NSFW content. However, this platform is definitely suited for anyone who enjoys playing around with language models and is looking for new ways to customize chatbots.