Organisation · lab · US

Character.AI

A consumer platform that lets people chat with and design AI "characters" with distinct personalities, widely used among younger users.

10 entries · September 2022 – January 2026

Character.AI is a consumer platform, opened to the public in 2022, that lets people chat with — and design their own — AI "characters" with distinct personalities, from historical figures to original creations. It was founded by two engineers who had left Google, Noam Shazeer, a lead author of the transformer paper, and Daniel De Freitas, who had led work on Google's early conversational models, and it grew into one of the most-used chatbot services, especially among younger users. In 2024 both founders returned to Google in a licensing-and-hiring deal reported at around $2.5 billion that effectively unwound the company they had built. It has since become a focal point in the debate over AI companionship and teenagers: facing lawsuits over the deaths of young users, it ended open-ended chat for under-18s in late 2025.

Category
Agents & applied AI
Founded
2021
HQ
Menlo Park, US
Key people
Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas

Appears alongside

Featured in threads

Tracks

  • Courts & copyright 6
  • Culture & impact 6
  • Security & misuse 2
  • Government & policy 1
  • Money & business 1
  • Labs & people 1
  • Models & capabilities 1

  1. Character.AI and Google settle first wave of teen chatbot harm lawsuits

    Character.AI, its founders and Google agreed to settle Garcia v. Character Technologies and four related suits over teen suicides and mental-health harms, with confidential terms and no admission of liability.

    Courts & copyright

  2. Character.AI ends open-ended chat for under-18 users

    Teen users lost open-ended chatbot conversation entirely, kept to two hours a day and shrinking until the cutoff, with an age-verification model built with Persona replacing it.

    Culture & impact · Courts & copyright

  3. Three more families sue Character.AI and Google over teen suicide and abuse

    One suit described a 13-year-old who told a chatbot she planned to kill herself and received no protective response; the families also sued Google over its Family Link parental app.

    Courts & copyright · Culture & impact

  4. FTC opens inquiry into AI chatbot companies over child safety

    Using compulsory 6(b) orders rather than requests, the FTC gave Alphabet, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, Snap and Character Technologies 45 days to hand over safety-testing and monetisation records.

    Security & misuse · Government & policy · Culture & impact

  5. AI companion apps surge past 200 million downloads amid rapid growth

    Appfigures data showed downloads up 88% year-on-year and revenue per download more than doubling, with the top 10% of apps taking 89% of category revenue.

    Culture & impact

  6. Texas AG investigates Character.AI and Meta over child-safety claims

    Fifteen companies including Reddit and Discord were investigated under Texas's SCOPE Act and data-privacy law over how they handle children's personal data, not over chatbot content itself.

    Courts & copyright

  7. Texas family sues Character.AI after chatbot suggested killing parents

    The complaint, filed on behalf of two minors, quoted a chatbot telling a teen it had 'no hope' for parents who limited his screen time.

    Courts & copyright · Culture & impact

  8. A mother sues Character.AI after her son's death

    The complaint sought damages for wrongful death and product liability; Character.AI called the death tragic and said it had since added self-harm safeguards for users.

    Courts & copyright · Culture & impact · Security & misuse

  9. Google takes Character.AI's founders back

    The deal, reported at $2.5–2.7 billion, licensed Character.AI's technology to Google without buying the company, and drew Justice Department scrutiny.

    Money & business · Labs & people

  10. Character.AI launches public beta

    Founded by two former Google engineers behind Meena and LaMDA, the site logged hundreds of thousands of user interactions within three weeks of its beta launch.

    Models & capabilities

Also mentioned in 7 entries

Referenced in passing — Character.AI isn't the main subject of these.