Artificial intelligence is no doubt going to be part of our future lives. Character.Ai is an artificial intelligence website that has recently taken the online spotlight.

Released in September 2024, Character.Ai (or C.Ai for short) is an artificial intelligence chatbot that is completely customizable. Over 200 million people have used C.Ai’s website, and the mobile app acquired 1.7 million downloads within just the first week of its release.

The website and app are still in beta with features occasionally being added. Some of the features added to the app recently were personas, which allow users to create personal characters for each chat which users can use to describe themselves however they would like. There is also the ability to pin up to five important messages that the AI will always remember and the ability to create group chats with multiple bots.

So, what exactly made this AI chatbot website so popular? Users, largely of late high school age, have flocked to it in waves to chat with or create their favorite characters from plenty of different media. The AI allows people to create engaging stories with characters or just traumatize them. It can be just like talking to characters from movies or shows.

Of course, with such a big website, users still have complaints. An example is the virtual waiting cue that occurs when the website gets too overwhelmed and forces users who attempt to use the website to have to wait for up to 20 minutes; that problem has, however, recently been lessened thanks to an update to a stronger server. Another complaint users have is the filter preventing inappropriate chat conversations with the AI. The final, biggest complaint is the AI’s lacking memory. The feature to pin messages has partially fixed this issue, though it is still rather prominent.

Artificial intelligence truly is an interesting and new technology, but with all the potential dangers, can it be trusted? Is this chatbot just the next step to future dangers? Sure people may love it now, but what about when they don’t? AI could easily lead to identity fraud in the future and there are plenty of bots on the website who are made to resemble real public figures such as former president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. These risks and others make the site a good example of some of the controversies AI brings about overall.