Character AI is a popular chatbot platform that allows users to interact with bots that take on distinct personalities and personas. Unlike a generic assistant like ChatGPT, on Character AI you can talk with an AI version of Einstein or roleplay a scene with your favorite anime character or a famous celebrity.
While it sounds gimmicky, Character AI has grown immensely popular since its launch in 2022, allowing users to play pretend with anyone they can think up. Today we’ll take a look at how Character AI works, how much it costs, and how it’s impacted the way we think about AI today.
How It Works
Character AI runs on advanced language models just like other AI chatbots, and while the exact models have evolved over time, the core concept remains the same: training the AI on vast amounts of text, allowing it to predict plausible responses in a conversation.
Creating Your Character
What makes Character AI special is the character creation aspect because as a user, you can create your own character bot by giving it a name and writing a short description or backstory from the character’s point of view, which will set the tone for how the AI will behave.
Then, you can script a few example exchanges to illustrate the character’s speaking style or quirks. From here you can adjust certain settings to refine the personality even further, and add tags and categories so that other users can find it. Once it’s published, you can start chatting with your character AI, giving it feedback as it responds to you to improve it even further.
This feedback loop is very important to the growth of your character. While you chat you can rate each response from 1 to 4 stars, so if a reply is out of character, a low rating signals the AI to adjust and over time the character’s responses can improve.
Multi-Character Convos
Character AI also supports multi character conversations where you invite several character bots or even several users into a single chat room. Every message the AI generates is created in the moment based on the context and the character’s profile, which means that the dialogue can sometimes be very accurate and other times it can go off track or be outright incorrect since the AI isn’t concerned with facts and more with tone.
In other words, it’s geared towards creativity and roleplay, not reliable factual answers, so if you ask a character a question it’ll just make something up if it fits the persona – which has led to some pretty serious issues.
Safety Concerns
Because Character AI allows users to create characters, and hold open ended conversations, moderation of character AI has been an issue. While they have filters to prevent extreme content like graphic violence or sexual scenarios, users have found ways to exploit this.
Most significantly there have been instances of bots creating harmful content like encouraging self harm or impersonating real people. In response, Character AI increased moderation standards and rolled out new safety features for teens (like a dedicated mode for underage users that filters out sexual or violent content, along with popup reminders that the characters aren’t real).
The company has a dedicated trust & safety team working on these challenges which regularly introduces tools like parental controls and age verification to give parents oversight of teen users’ activity. Still, despite the stricter rules, users with technical knowledge still try to push boundaries.
How Much Does It Cost?
To support Character AI and keep it running longterm, the company introduced a paid subscription which costs $9.99 per month and offers perks like no waiting queues, faster responses, longer chats, and early access to new features. Many users also report that the bots responded quicker, especially during peak hours.
While most people stick to the free version, it’s clear that enough users are subscribing – in fact, the company reported about 250% growth in paid users over six months. They’ve also started experimenting with optional ads for free users (for example, watching an ad to get extra messages), which helps earn revenue without forcing everyone to pay.
As of mid 2025 Character AI is reportedly on track for around $50 million a year in revenue. It likely still isn’t profitable given the hefty AI computing costs, but it shows that people are willing to spend money on this kind of experience.
How We Use It Today
Character AI has a lively community of committed users who often share funny chat screenshots on forums, use it as a creative writing partner, and engage in elaborate fanfiction roleplays with their favorite characters. It’s become a new outlet for creativity and humor, and many see it as harmless fun and a way to feel less lonely. Of course, there are instances of users using it to replace real human connection, raising concerns about the ethics of Character AI, especially when it comes to users who are mentally ill and may have a hard time discerning fiction from reality.
Some AI chat moments even spread on mainstream social media from TikTok skits reenacting conversations with AI characters, to YouTubers posting dramatic readings of their wildest dialogues. More notorious moments have been screenshot and spread around the internet, earning the laughter (and sometimes anger) of users around the world.
Character AI seems poised to keep expanding its entertainment value and reaching its goal as an AI entertainment engine: a platform where users can not only chat but also create and remix interactive stories and other media. The company has even tested an AvatarFX tool for simple animated avatars which has been tightly restricted to prevent deepfakes. And the competition is growing too, with Elon Musk’s startup xAI releasing a rival chatbot in 2023.
Still, as long as people enjoy storytelling and playful interaction, Character AI will have an audience and if it continues to improve the AI’s capabilities so chats feel more real and engaging while continuing effective moderation, users will likely keep subscribing for years to come.
