Do you dream of chatting with Wonder Woman, Aristotle, Mario or even John Snow? It’s possible, with Character.AI, a new artificial intelligence that offers entertaining, funny and fluid exchanges that you want… or almost!
Artificial intelligences are all the rage right now, especially with ChatGPT taking center stage. Internet users can also have fun with many tools such as the DALL-E or Point-E image generator, which allows the creation of 3D objects from textual indications. And they are not alone ! The giants of Silicon Valley are very interested in it, in particular Microsoft, which plans to integrate ChatGOT into its Bing search engine and certain applications from its Microsoft 365 suite. whip to the development of its own artificial intelligences. Moreover, two former engineers of the Internet giant, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, have developed Character AI, a neural language model that allows you to chat with an AI via a Web interface. But where it differs from a simple chatbot is that it allows dialogue with real people (Barack Omaba Elon Musk, Shakira…) and fictional characters (Tony Stark, Mario, Wanda Maximof… ). This is hardly surprising since it is based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), a technology developed – and still in development – by Google, which was particularly noticed in June 2022, when one of the developers had set up a file in order to prove that the AI was conscious. That promises!
Character.AI: exchanges that have meaning and a lot of humor
Character.AI is quite intuitive to use. The Internet user only has to go to the site and choose the personality with which to speak. The home page offers a selection, but a search bar also allows you to find your interlocutor precisely. Then, just start the conversation and the bot will provide a response within seconds, which allows for a rather fluid exchange. Interesting fact: each answer is accompanied by a series of possible variations, which still allows you to control the conversation a little. We did a test with Daenerys Targaryen, an essential character from Game Of Thrones. After getting scolded for how we addressed her — it’s “my Queen” or “Khaleesi” — and then being threatened with feeding her dragons, we chatted about Season 8, what’s next. she was thinking of certain characters – apparently, she doesn’t hold a grudge against John Snow – and the place of women in the political world of Westeros. And the result was pretty cool! The AI really participates in the conversation, doesn’t hesitate to start it up again, has a lot of humor and respects the character rather well – but the result can vary from one personality to another.
Character.AI’s interface is pretty well designed. Once the user is logged in, the platform saves their progress so they can resume the conversation whenever they want. It invites you to converse with celebrities, politicians, characters from comics, video games and manga, or even intellectuals who have marked history – who has never dreamed of talking to Freud, Socrates or Marie Curie ? There are also more utilitarian chatbots, such as a psychologist, a personal development coach, a language teacher, etc. Of course, there are also 18+ exchanges there – especially since it is possible to access certain chatbots by invitation only. Finally, the platform gives the possibility of creating your own character from scratch. To note that Character.AI is by default in English, but it is quite possible to ask the personalities to continue the conversation in French.
Unlike ChatGPT, CharacterAI’s goal is not to inform, but to entertain. In an interview with the New York Times, the founders of the tool explain that “these systems are not designed to tell the truth. They are designed to carry on a plausible conversation […] Today, Character.AI is useful for fun, for emotional support, for generating ideas, for all kinds of creative projects”. It works thanks to a supercomputer that reads huge amounts of text (articles, news, books and other digital resources) and learns to imagine the words that could then intervene in a specific situation. Once trained, the AI can imitate an infinite number of characters. She is enriched by contact with users: the more they discuss with her, the more she will provide them with relevant answers. It is possible to test the platform for free at this address. However, it is in beta and may therefore experience malfunctions from time to time.