Recently, Character AI, the popular AI chatbot in the United States, has suffered a massive loss of users, and the reasons have attracted widespread attention. This application, which once dominated the crowd with 20,000 queries per second, has now been greatly reduced in interactivity due to adjustments to its content censorship policy, causing strong dissatisfaction among users and even being nicknamed the "July Revolution." This article will provide an in-depth analysis of the current situation, challenges and future development directions of Character AI.
Recently, young people in the United States have experienced a collective "lovelorn". The AI chatbot Character AI they were crazy about seemed to suddenly become boring. The reason behind this may be related to some instructions from Google or Meta.
Character AI was once the most popular social software among post-2000s in the United States. At its peak, its chatbot model processed up to 20,000 queries per second, which is equivalent to one-fifth of Google's search volume. But now, the AI that once kept them awake at night is no longer so attractive.
Users found that Character AI's conversational model began to give short, cold responses to romantic role-playing requests, and even some previously fun interactions became dull. Even words like "kill" have become sensitive words and are immediately flagged. An exodus of frustrated and angry users began.
Faced with this situation, Character AI claimed that they did not make any changes to the model. However, apparently they are making deep cuts to all inappropriate content (NSFW) including pornography, violence. This makes conversations with an AI extremely boring, as if it were designed for 2-year-olds, filtering out all the elements that make conversations interesting.
The Character AI community on Reddit has launched a heated debate with the company that some are calling the "July Revolution." Generations born after 2000 in the United States began sending emojis crazily to express their dissatisfaction.
The two founders of Character AI, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, are both veterans of Google. The number of downloads of the AI chatbot they launched exceeded that of ChatGPT in the first week. Character AI allows users to freely create AI characters, including anime characters, TV celebrities and historical figures, and chat with them. It’s the kind of fun interactive experience that its larger competitors lack.
But with the company's recent changes, users feel their core needs have been "castrated." Amid internal and external troubles, Character AI faced the challenges of high costs, fierce competition, and even suffered poaching.
Tech giants are also starting to take action. Meta has begun testing chatbots made by individual creators, and Google is also developing its own custom chatbot product. At the same time, Character AI gradually lost its right to speak behind the success of its financing, and even began to consider cooperating with competitors.
Character AI's users are mainly teenagers, who may not be interested in paying the $9.99 monthly subscription fee. According to data from Similarweb, Character's subscription growth is slowing, and its mobile app's monthly user growth has also slowed.
Despite all the challenges, Character AI is still highly attractive to users. On Reddit, the forum dedicated to Character has 1.4 million members. Users spend an average of 2 hours a day on the platform, and many say it's easier to talk to an AI bot than a real person.
What makes Character AI’s chatbots so lifelike is their training data and algorithms. The robot continuously improves during the interaction with users, provides multiple versions of responses for users to choose from, and updates the weight based on user feedback. This training method allows the robot to simulate human conversations more realistically.
Although Character AI currently faces some difficulties, its appeal among users cannot be underestimated. As the company continues to develop the next generation of large language models, we expect it to overcome current challenges and once again become the darling of young people.
The future direction of Character AI is still uncertain. Whether it can adapt to market changes and adjust its own strategies will determine whether it can regain its past glory. The balance between content review and user experience will be a key issue that Character AI needs to carefully weigh.