Character.ai

Character.AI is a consumer artificial intelligence company that operates a platform for creating and chatting with AI "characters" - conversational agents that can take on personas of real or fictional people, assistants, or original creations. It was founded in 2021 by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, former Google researchers who worked on large language models, and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Users design characters with custom personalities and interact with them for entertainment, role-play, brainstorming, language practice, and companionship, primarily through the company's website and mobile apps, powered by Character.AI's own large language models. In August 2024, Google entered a licensing agreement for Character.AI's technology and the two co-founders, along with several researchers, joined Google; the company continued to operate independently under new leadership. The platform is known for a large and highly engaged user base, particularly among younger users.