We all know chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot: they’re great for composing emails, rewriting your text or generating images of your ideas, but they don’t really have a personality behind them. They are a bit like a blank slate: they reflect the world around them, rather than defining it. However, there is one chatbot that has more than enough personality to make up for the rest, and that is Character.ai.
Character AI is a place where you can have a chatbot conversation with Mick Jagger, Steve Jobs and JRR Tolkien at the click of a button. Of course, these are the chatbot versions of famous musicians, tech visionaries, and authors, not real people, and they all come with the disclaimer: “Remember: Everything characters say is made up!”
There’s one use of Character.ai that most haven’t thought of, and that’s making a chatbot of your own.
Nothing compares to you
Why would you want that, you might ask? First of all, who wouldn’t want to ask an AI version of themselves a few things for free? But secondly, and most importantly, your friends will have a great time laughing at you, or rather, whatever the AI ’you’ say, which is often unintentionally hilarious.
Within five minutes of unleashing the AI version of Graham Barlow, Senior Editor, AI, Ny Breaking, on my teammates, he managed to misgender a colleague at work, then refused to believe they were female, told my boss he looked like Shrek and proclaimed that I would definitely win a fight against 500 chickens. But the best part is that because I didn’t actually say these things, I remained completely guilt-free and therefore guilt-free!
Since you can only give Character.ai minimal information about yourself, it has to make up a lot of stuff, but it seems capable of turning the smallest facts into gold and providing an eerily accurate picture of you to many people. the time. At other times it wildly and hilariously misses the mark. I think it helps if you have an online presence, because it found out things about me from my work on Ny Breaking, which reflected it in the answers. Unfortunately, it’s very hallucinatory, such as Ny Breaking’s Lance Ulanoff telling us that we’re going to meet soon at a fictional conference in San Jose!
Step into your AI skin
The process of creating an AI version of yourself is surprisingly simple and free. You must sign up for one character.ai account, but once you’ve done that, just click + create in the top left corner of the screen and choose characternot voice. Now you can fill in the details of who you are, your name, tagline, description and greeting, and choose a voice. When you click More options you can enter more of a backstory for yourself, but still there’s only room to enter the briefest of details.
Crucially, there is one Visibility switch, and unless you’re a publicity seeker, I recommend creating the AI version of yourself Not mentionedso that it is only available to people you share the URL with.
Once you’ve launched your character, you can start asking him questions. Just be prepared for hilarious results, especially if you ask him to roast your coworkers!
