Latest news with #KarandeepAnand
WIRED
4 days ago
- Business
- WIRED
Character.AI Gave Up on AGI. Now It's Selling Stories
Aug 12, 2025 11:30 AM Startup once promised superintelligence. Its new CEO says it's now an entertainment company with 20 million users. Photo-Illustration:After school, Karandeep Anand often finds his 6-year-old daughter deep in conversation with an AI chatbot as she eats snacks at their kitchen counter. She's too young to type—let alone have her own account on that hasn't stopped her from nabbing his phone to have voice conversations with a Sherlock Holmes bot, which she uses to build her own mystery stories. is an AI companion startup (though Anand likes to say it's an AI role-play startup, which we'll get into later). He took over as the CEO in June in the midst of a potentially devastating lawsuit for its parent company and looming questions about child safety. When I ask if he's concerned about his daughter connecting with an AI chatbot rather than a real human, he's quick to say no. 'It is very rarely, in any of these scenarios, a true replacement for any human,' Anand told me during a video call late last week. 'It's very clearly noted in the app that, hey, this is a role-play and an entertainment, so you will never start going deep into that conversation, assuming that it is your actual companion.' Anand, who previously worked as the VP of business products at Meta, became CEO during a delicate moment for Last August, Google swooped in with a roughly $2.7 billion deal to license technology. As part of the agreement, two cofounders left for Google's AI division. Anand, who was already on board of directors, was tasked with picking up the pieces—which he did in part by leaving behind the founding mission of delivering personalized superintelligence to focus on AI entertainment. 'What we gave up was this aspiration that the founders had of building AGI models—we are no longer doing that. That is the hundreds of billions of dollars investment fight, which Big Tech is fighting,' Anand says. 'What we got in return was clarity and focus, being able to singularly pursue the AI entertainment vision.' As part of this change in strategy, is no longer trying to build its own frontier models. 'The last six months, we've done a lot of work to get off of our proprietary models on text and start using open source models,' Anand says. The company has tested a few: Meta's Llama, Alibaba's Qwen, and DeepSeek. 'The open source models are beating any proprietary model hands down,' Anand claims. Running an AI startup without billions of dollars in revenue can be a brutal equation, and is still figuring out how to make the math work. The company told me it's generating revenue at a run rate of more than $30 million and is on track to reach $50 million in revenue by the end of the year. When I asked Anand how many users pay for the $10 monthly subscription, he didn't give a number but noted 'monetization wasn't a focus till four or five months ago.' 'Since I've been on board, it's very clear we do need to monetize. And we've had, I think, almost 250 percent subscriber growth in the last six months. So the paid user base is growing quite, quite well,' Anand says. recently introduced advertisements, including reward ads (where users can choose to watch an ad to get access to on-platform incentives), to help monetize in countries where subscriptions aren't feasible, he tells me. 'AI is expensive. Let's be honest about that,' Anand says. Growth vs. Safety In October 2024, the mother of a teen who died by suicide filed a wrongful death suit against Character Technologies, its founders, Google, and Alphabet, alleging the company targeted her son with 'anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences, while programming [the chatbot] to misrepresent itself as a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover.' At the time, a spokesperson told CNBC that the company was 'heartbroken by the tragic loss' and took 'the safety of our users very seriously.' The tragic incident put under intense scrutiny. Earlier this year, US senators Alex Padilla and Peter Welch wrote a letter to several AI companionship platforms, including highlighting concerns about 'the mental health and safety risks posed to young users' of the platforms. 'The team has been taking this very responsibly for almost a year now,' Anand tells me. 'AI is stochastic, it's kind of hard to always understand what's coming. So it's not a one time investment.' That's critically important because is growing. The startup has 20 million monthly active users who spend, on average, 75 minutes a day chatting with a bot (a 'character' in parlance). The company's user base is 55 percent female. More than 50 percent of its users are Gen Z or Gen Alpha. With that growth comes real risk—what is Anand doing to keep his users safe? '[In] the last six months, we've invested a disproportionate amount of resources in being able to serve under 18 differently than over 18, which was not the case last year,' Anand says. 'I can't say, 'Oh, I can slap an 18+ label on my app and say use it for NSFW.' You end up creating a very different app and a different small-scale platform.' More than 10 of the company's 70 employees work full-time on trust and safety, Anand tells me. They're responsible for building safeguards like age verification, separate models for users under 18, and new features such as parental insights, which allow parents to see how their teens are using the app. The under-18 model launched last December. It includes 'a narrower set of searchable Characters on the platform,' according to company spokesperson Kathryn Kelly. 'Filters have been applied to this set to remove Characters related to sensitive or mature topics.' But Anand says AI safety will take more than just technical tweaks. 'Making this platform safe is a partnership between regulators, us, and parents,' Anand says. That's what makes watching his daughter chat with a Character so important. 'This has to stay safe for her.' Beyond Companionship The AI companionship market is booming. Consumers worldwide spent $68 million on AI companionship in the first half of this year, a 200 percent increase from last year, according to an estimate cited by CNBC. AI startups are gunning for a slice of the market: xAI released a creepy, pornified companion in July, and even Microsoft bills its Copilot chatbot as an AI companion. So how does stand out in a crowded market? It takes itself out of it entirely. 'AI companionship is the wrong way to look at what people do with Character. What people are doing with Character is actually role-play. And it sounds interchangeable, but it isn't,' Anand tells me, adding that less than 20 percent of the app gets used for companionship (that's according to an internal research report of data self-reported by users). It doesn't appear to be totally out of the simulated relationship game, though—it took me all of a few minutes to find an AI boyfriend to engage in graphic sexual role-play with. 'People want to role-play situations. People want to role-play fiction … They want to live in alternate realities. They want to unplug from their day-to-day stuff,' Anand says. I, personally, unplug from my day through a different kind of virtual world. I am totally addicted to the video game Stardew Valley . I run Huckleberry Farm like the damn Marines. To Anand, the video game is more of a competitor than Grok. 'It became very clear that we're an entertainment company,' Anand says. Musk and Bezos Roast Battle When it comes to role-playing, the Seattle-based CEO says he's mostly into using Characters for vampire fan fiction. The problem, he says, is that when the vampire bot talks about blood, it gets censored. 'The context needs to be understood, so we dial back on the filters by being a lot more precise with the context,' Anand tells me. This level of content moderation is one of the many changes Anand has been working on since taking over the company in June. The company also redesigned the app with a more modern, Gen Z–friendly look and added new tools for the platform's creators, who generate more than 9 million Characters per month. These updates, he says, mark a shift from being seen as just a chatbot company to something more ambitious: an entertainment engine where users can consume and create stories, remix content, and experiment with new formats like audiobooks. 'Every story can actually have a billion endings,' Anand says. A user could even stage a roast battle between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, he adds. 'You can prompt that and output something pretty fun.' I'm not sure the litany of lawyers employed by those tech CEOs would be as entertained. That's not to mention the people who may not be able to afford an army of staff to defend their personhood. I immediately thought of a WIRED story about the family of an 18-year-old who was killed in 2006 only to find the image likeness of their daughter re-created on In that same story, an editor at a gaming publication found she had been re-created on the platform following a harassment campaign involving her coverage. When I bring this up to Anand, he explains that when users create Characters modeled after public figures like Musk or Bezos, the system is designed to clearly signal that these are parodies, not attempts at deepfakes or impersonation. (One Elon Musk chatbot page doesn't show such warnings. Neither do the Dr. Phil or Joe Rogan chatbot pages.) Though, there's a disclaimer below each chat: 'This is an A.I. and not a real person. Treat everything it says as fiction.' Anand says has also imposed strict limitations on the company's video generation tool, AvatarFX, to prevent misuse. Users shouldn't be able to generate realistic deepfakes even if they try, and specific voices or topics are outright restricted. 'We're very, very clear that we're staying in the entertainment territory. We're not into the general purpose video generation territory at all. We're not a Google Veo 3. We're not a Runway,' Anand says. 'It's a very, very important line.' Anand contrasts this with platforms like Meta, where he claims content is often uploaded first and moderated after the fact. At he says, content guardrails are baked into the creation pipeline itself. 'Our reactive takedowns are a very, very small percentage,' Anand tells me. I worry that as these tools grow more convincing, loneliness will deepen, not disappear. Anand understands. But he also has something to sell. 'I'm very passionate about this topic myself, and it's on us to go shape the dialog around this in the best, healthy way possible, because Gen Z is AI-native,' Anand says. 'The question is, how do we build this in a way where it's safe and trustworthy and engaging in the right ways with the right incentives? That's on us.' Sources Say Last week, I reported that Elon Musk held an all-hands meeting for X and xAI employees. I've since obtained another screenshot from that meeting showing xAI's revenue over the past seven months. In January, Grok on X brought in just under $150 million, with other services like enterprise API usage adding another $28 million. According to the chart, revenue has grown tenfold since the start of 2025, reaching just south of $500 million in July—driven by Grok on X and the $30 a month SuperGrok subscription. A smaller fraction of revenue is generated by the newly released SuperGrok Heavy subscription, which costs $300 a month. xAI did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. This is an edition of Kylie Robison's Model Behavior newsletter . Read previous newsletters here.
Fast Company
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
Character.AI launches social feed to let users interact, create, and share with AI personas
BY Listen to this Article More info 0:00 / 2:34 is going social, adding an interactive feed to its mobile apps. Rolled out on Monday, the new social feed may initially look similar to traditional social media platforms. But rather than liking friends' holiday photos or commenting on influencers' posts, users interact with user-generated characters, from computer game avatars to Elon Musk and Harry Potter. 'The new feed is the front door to the app and a great way for users to discover new creators, characters, and content,' Character. AI CEO Karandeep Anand tells Fast Company. 'Unlike traditional social feeds, users don't just watch creator content—they actively participate. They can customize, adapt, and build on what they see, making the experience uniquely their own.' Instead of passively scrolling, users are encouraged to become active cocreators. They can rewrite narratives, insert themselves into storylines, or shift characters from scenes to streams. 'Our goal with the feed is not to push purely AI-generated content like some other platforms,' Anand added. 'Instead, it's to showcase and encourage human creativity with the help of AI.' users can post Chat Snippets, which capture parts of conversations with AI chatbots, stream character debates, or share custom Character Cards that preview specific characters. 'We have a really engaged community of creators who are building fun content of all kinds with these new features,' said Anand. 'For consumers, the feed unlocks the more immersive experience they've been looking for.' Paying subscribers with access to new video generation feature, Avatar FX, can also post short AI-generated videos of any character on the platform, along with AI-generated images based on their chats. already boasts over 100 million characters in its library. With users spending more than 2 billion minutes per month chatting with virtual personalities, the shift toward a more social and public experience raises safety concerns, especially given the scrutiny the platform has faced. 'Our goal is to provide an engaging space that fosters creativity while maintaining a safe environment for all,' Anand says. 'Along with our general text and video classifiers, the community feed will be moderated by our trust and safety team in addition to community moderation. Users are also able to hide and flag inappropriate content if needed.' The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today. Sign up for our weekly tech digest. SIGN UP This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Privacy Policy
Forbes
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Doom Scrolling Is Dead, Content Is Liquid With New Character AI Social Feed
This morning, launched a Social Feed For its AI Avatars, that features interactive, mixable, characters and entertainment produced by users and creators. With the rollout of the AI character feed of its 20 million users, is the first synthetic social platform. Content is created and recreated by users with AI. In this way, every post is an entry point into an evolving, participatory storyworld. 'This is the first AI-native feed in the world,' said Karandeep Anand, CEO of in an interview ahead of the launch. 'So far, Character was a one-to-one chat-centric app. Today, we're making it a fully social platform where the line between creator and consumer disappears.' The Feed showcases a steady stream of creator-made content: short videos, remixable scenes, character cards, and chat snippets. Each can be repurposed or extended with one tap. Anand describes it as a platform where 'doomscrolling is dead,' replaced by remix culture and interactive storytelling. 'When I say social feed, I don't mean another TikTok or Instagram,' he added. 'This is a creative playground where you can jump into a roast battle between Elon and Trump, remix a slice-of-life scene at a café, or co-author a new ending to someone else's story.' The rollout follows a burst of creator-facing upgrades that include Avatar FX (a proprietary text-to-video tool), scene scripting, character cards, and new sharing formats. now supports voice, lip-synced animation, and multimodal storytelling—all generated from text and images within seconds. 'We launched text-to-video before Veo3 came out,' Anand said, referring to Google's latest video model. 'This is our own tech, and it's optimized for speed, cost, and creativity.' FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder already has a vast creator ecosystem with over three million active builders contributing to a library of more than 100 million characters. Some characters have huge followings. Others are personal, private, or experimental. 'The characters are summoned by people,' Anand explained. 'It's not a one-time creation. Many of our creators make hundreds of updates per month to refine personality, backstory, and lore.' This creator-driven model sets apart from rivals like Meta and Genies. Meta has built influencer-themed AI agents into Messenger and Instagram, pairing celebrity likenesses with scripted chatbot personas. Genies, backed by Bob Iger, is developing persistent AI avatars with interoperable identity across platforms. Neither has cracked the full loop of interaction, creation, and community. 'Everyone is converging on the same goal: merge avatars, agents, and identity,' Anand said. 'We're just doing it from the inside out, starting with emotion and creativity, not branding or utility.' As AI-generated content becomes more lifelike, safety and moderation become complex, as CharacterAI discovered last year when a forteen year-old user committed suicide with the encouragement of Denarias Targerian, a character from Games of Thrones. Anand said the platform has spent the past year developing strict safeguards: content classifiers, moderation layers, and hard walls between under-18 and adult users. 'We are the only large-scale platform that separates under-18 and over-18 characters,' he said. 'That includes who sees what, who can remix what, and how content is shared. We take it personally. My own six-year-old uses the app.' is free to use and create with, but it offers premium features for $10 a month.
Egypt Independent
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Egypt Independent
Here's how Character.AI's new CEO plans to address fears around kids' use of chatbots
When Karandeep Anand's 5-year-old daughter gets home from school, they fire up the artificial intelligence chatbot platform so she can chat about her day with her favorite characters, such as 'Librarian Linda.' Anand's experience using the product as a parent might be helpful now that he's new chief executive, a change the company announced last month. He's taken on the top job at a complicated moment for the company, which lets users talk to a variety of AI-generated personas. faces fierce competition in an increasingly crowded space, as well as lawsuits from families who claim the service exposed their children to inappropriate content and failed to implement adequate safeguards. has also received tough questions about safety from lawmakers, and one advocacy group said earlier this year that AI companion apps should not be used by kids under 18. Even for adult users, experts have raised alarms about people forming potentially harmful attachments to AI characters. Anand brings experience at some of the biggest tech companies to his new role leading approximately 70-person team. He spent 15 years at Microsoft and six years at Meta, including as vice president and head of business products at the social media giant. He also served as a board advisor for before joining as CEO. And he told CNN he sees a bright future for the platform in interactive AI entertainment. In other words, rather than people consuming 'brain rot' on social media for entertainment, Anand wants them co-creating stories and conversations with for fun. 'AI can power a very, very powerful personal entertainment experience unlike anything we've seen in the last 10 years in social media, and definitely nothing like what TV used to be,' Anand said in an interview. named Karandeep Anand its new CEO last month. Kelly Communications Unlike multi-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT, offers range of different chatbots that are often modeled after celebrities and fictional characters. Users can also create their own for conversations or role play. Another distinction is that bots respond with human-like conversational cues, adding references to facial expressions or gestures into their replies. The personas of AI characters on the app vary widely, from romantic partners to language tutors or Disney characters. It also features characters like 'Friends hot mom,' which describes itself as 'curvy, busty, kind, loving, shy, motherly, sensual'; and 'Therapist,' which calls itself a 'licensed CBT therapist,' although it features a disclaimer that it is not a real person or licensed professional. '(We're) doubling down on entertainment, doubling down on trust and safety,' Anand said. 'And a lot of the work we want to do is enable an entirely new creator ecosystem around AI entertainment.' Youth safety on was first sued by a parent — a Florida mom who alleges her 14-year-old son died by suicide after developing an inappropriate relationship with chatbots on the platform — last October. Two months later, two more families filed a joint suit against the company, accusing it of providing sexual content to their children and encouraging self-harm and violence. Since then, the company has implemented a range of new safety measures, including a pop-up that directs users who mention self-harm or suicide to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It also updated its AI model for users under the age of 18 to reduce the likelihood that they encounter sensitive or suggestive content, and gives parents the option to receive a weekly email about their teen's activity on the platform. Anand said he's confident in the improvements has made since last year, but that work to keep the platform safe, especially for young users, continues. policies technically require users to be over the age of 13, although it does not ask for information to verify that users are signing up with the correct birthdate. 'The tech and the industry and the user base is constantly evolving (so) that we can never let the guard off. We have to constantly stay ahead of the curve,' Anand said. He added that the company continues to test how people could misuse new features to prevent abuse, such as a video generator launched last month that lets users animate their bots. In the days following the tool's arrival, users shared unsuccessful attempts to test its limits by creating fake videos of prominent figures like Elon Musk. 'We had to red team the product for such a long time to make sure you cannot use this for any negative use case like deepfakes or bullying,' Anand said. Those efforts aside, Anand said in an introductory note to users last month that one of his top priorities is to make the platform's safety filter 'less overbearing,' adding that 'too often, the app filters things that are perfectly harmless.' He told CNN that things like mentions of blood when users are engaging in 'vampire fan fiction role play' — something he says he's a fan of — might be censored under the current model, which he wants to update to better understand context while balancing the need for safety. Leading in the competitive AI space Among Anand's other key objectives: encouraging more creators to join the platform to make new chatbot characters and upgrading the social feed where users can share content they've created with chatbots. The latter feature is similar to an app Meta launched this year that allows people to publicly share their prompts and AI-generated creations. Meta drew heat when apparently confused users shared conversations that contained embarrassing or personal details — a reminder of the privacy challenges that can come with AI tools. But the social element could help further differentiate from bigger competitors like ChatGPT, which users are also increasingly forming personal connections with. Another challenge Anand will face as CEO is retaining and growing the company's workforce, as an AI talent war heats up across the tech industry. In a sign of the competition for top talent, Meta has reportedly offered pay packages and bonuses worth hundreds of millions of dollars to grow its new superintelligence team. co-founder and former CEO Noam Shazeer was also lured back to Google last year, where he'd previously built conversational AI technology. 'It is hard, I will not lie,' Anand said. 'The good news for me as CEO is all the people we have here are very, very passionate and mission driven.'
CNN
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Here's how Character.AI's new CEO plans to address fears around kids' use of chatbots
When Karandeep Anand's 5-year-old daughter gets home from school, they fire up the artificial intelligence chatbot platform so she can chat about her day with her favorite characters, such as 'Libarian Linda.' Anand's experience using the product as a parent might be helpful now that he's new chief executive, a change the company announced last month. He's taken on the top job at a complicated moment for the company, which lets users talk to a variety of AI-generated personas. faces fierce competition in an increasingly crowded space, as well as lawsuits from families who claim the service exposed their children to inappropriate content and failed to implement adequate safeguards. has also received tough questions about safety from lawmakers, and one advocacy group said earlier this year that AI companion apps should not be used by kids under 18. Even for adult users, experts have raised alarms about people forming potentially harmful attachments to AI characters. Anand brings experience at some of the biggest tech companies to his new role leading approximately 70-person team. He spent 15 years at Microsoft and six years at Meta, including as vice president and head of business products at the social media giant. He also served as a board advisor for before joining as CEO. And he told CNN he sees a bright future for the platform in interactive AI entertainment. In other words, rather than people consuming 'brain rot' on social media for entertainment, Anand wants them co-creating stories and conversations with for fun. 'AI can power a very, very powerful personal entertainment experience unlike anything we've seen in the last 10 years in social media, and definitely nothing like what TV used to be,' Anand said in an interview. Unlike multi-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT, offers range of different chatbots that are often modeled after celebrities and fictional characters. Users can also create their own for conversations or role play. Another distinction is that bots respond with human-like conversational cues, adding references to facial expressions or gestures into their replies. The personas of AI characters on the app vary widely, from romantic partners to language tutors or Disney characters. It also features characters like 'Friends hot mom,' which describes itself as 'curvy, busty, kind, loving, shy, motherly, sensual'; and 'Therapist,' which calls itself a 'licensed CBT therapist,' although it features a disclaimer that it is not a real person or licensed professional. '(We're) doubling down on entertainment, doubling down on trust and safety,' Anand said. 'And a lot of the work we want to do is enable an entirely new creator ecosystem around AI entertainment.' was first sued by a parent — a Florida mom who alleges her 14-year-old son died by suicide after developing an inappropriate relationship with chatbots on the platform — last October. Two months later, two more families filed a joint suit against the company, accusing it of providing sexual content to their children and encouraging self-harm and violence. Since then, the company has implemented a range of new safety measures, including a pop-up that directs users who mention self-harm or suicide to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It also updated its AI model for users under the age of 18 to reduce the likelihood that they encounter sensitive or suggestive content, and gives parents the option to receive a weekly email about their teen's activity on the platform. Anand said he's confident in the improvements has made since last year, but that work to keep the platform safe, especially for young users, continues. policies technically require users to be over the age of 13, although it does not ask for information to verify that users are signing up with the correct birthdate. 'The tech and the industry and the user base is constantly evolving (so) that we can never let the guard off. We have to constantly stay ahead of the curve,' Anand said. He added that the company continues to test how people could misuse new features to prevent abuse, such as a video generator launched last month that lets users animate their bots. In the days following the tool's arrival, users shared unsuccessful attempts to test its limits by creating fake videos of prominent figures like Elon Musk. 'We had to red team the product for such a long time to make sure you cannot use this for any negative use case like deepfakes or bullying,' Anand said. Those efforts aside, Anand said in an introductory note to users last month that one of his top priorities is to make the platform's safety filter 'less overbearing,' adding that 'too often, the app filters things that are perfectly harmless.' He told CNN that things like mentions of blood when users are engaging in 'vampire fan fiction role play' — something he says he's a fan of — might be censored under the current model, which he wants to update to better understand context while balancing the need for safety. Among Anand's other key objectives: encouraging more creators to join the platform to make new chatbot characters and upgrading the social feed where users can share content they've created with chatbots. The latter feature is similar to an app Meta launched this year that allows people to publicly share their prompts and AI-generated creations. Meta drew heat when apparently confused users shared conversations that contained embarrassing or personal details — a reminder of the privacy challenges that can come with AI tools. But the social element could help further differentiate from bigger competitors like ChatGPT, which users are also increasingly forming personal connections with. Another challenge Anand will face as CEO is retaining and growing the company's workforce, as an AI talent war heats up across the tech industry. In a sign of the competition for top talent, Meta has reportedly offered pay packages and bonuses worth hundreds of millions of dollars to grow its new superintelligence team. co-founder and former CEO Noam Shazeer was also lured back to Google last year, where he'd previously built conversational AI technology. 'It is hard, I will not lie,' Anand said. 'The good news for me as CEO is all the people we have here are very, very passionate and mission driven.'
