Company that doesn't make money goes bankrupt. Who could have seen that coming?

The first domino falls

One would think that it would be pretty easy to turn a business model based on theft and exploitation into something profitable, but the AI industry proves that you can rip people off and go bankrupt at the same time.

I guess they forgot the part where they go public and hand gullible retail investors the bag.

There's also a Techcrunch article that had this bit of insight:

It also shows that consumer-facing AI products are really hard to scale and monetize. Character.AI was one of the top apps in terms of time spent, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. But high engagement can be a double-edged sword; AI costs rise the more people use the app, which consequently also increases the pressure to monetize users.

And all that data they accumulated during their run will be sold off to the highest bidder. Some new company who you'll have no idea what they'll do with that data...

You know, all that usage data that you agreed to give Character.ai? All the records of your conversations, your profile, interests, personal secrets? That they said they dont sell to third parties?

Well, that was then, this is now. The liquidator dont care about your agreed on ToS. That's not a real contract.

Pop that bubble! 😍

Going to say right now that this should not have existed in the first place, that way I'm not mincing words.

I wonder if this will lead to noticeably higher suicide rates among users of the app? I remember when they just slightly changed how the characters talk to users and people acted like their grandma got shot.

Woah. Honestly, character AI was I think the second most profitable thing in AI after enterprise AI. Like, horny and lonely folks are the most vulnerable people and are heavily exploited ones too. If you cannot make that a viable buisness, this is really a bad signal for all AI buisnesses.

Good.

well this was definitely one of the weirder services out there. and disney's paying 20 million for it? that's the real headline lmao can't wait to find out how they manage to resell it to our kids. horrifying

The Walt Disney Co. has agreed to pay $20 million for a non-exclusive, perpetual license to Character.ai's intellectual property.

What is Character.ai's intellectual property, exactly?

let it be the first of many

So it begins...

They've been around (and somewhat notorious) for a long time, even before "AI" became a popular term.

Trying to escape from actually being held accountable for the harms they've caused. Scum is as scum does.

reminder that the people that constantly use these sites would probably shame you for being in like an rp server

:)

Reopens as "characters . ai"

Woe.