Conversation explosion! Discover Character.AI's new discussion groups, where people and multiple AIs talk to each other.

Character.AI launches a new group chat service with AI characters

Character.AI, an AI chatbot start-up backed by a16z and founded by former Google AI researchers, is today offering a new feature to its subscribers. The chatbot platform, which offers customizable AI companions with distinct personalities and tools to create your own, now offers a group chat experience where users and their friends can chat with multiple AI characters at the same time.

Group chat with AI characters

Group chat with AI characters, as it's called, lets users create a group chat with their favorite AI characters only, or a combination of humans and AI companions, according to the company. The idea is that users will be able to socialize with friends, share ideas and collaborate in real time, just like in any other group chat experience, but with their AI companions now in the mix.

The company suggests that users try to get scientists and AI thinkers like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla and Stephen Hawking to chat together, for example, or create a group chat with mythological gods like Zeus, Hades and Poseidon.

For more practical use cases, you can start a group chat with friends around a topic or theme, such as travel, gaming, book club or role-playing, then invite an AI companion to facilitate and enrich these conversations.

Competition from other AI chatbots

The idea of adding AI chatbots to a group chat is not unique to Character.AI. Snapchat's My AI chatbot can be added to group chats with the @myai command, while Meta recently introduced the ability to call a large number of new AI-powered bots in its apps, including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram DMs, including those based on celebrities such as MrBeast, Paris Hilton, Tom Brady, Charli D'Amelio, Snoop Dogg, and others. This latest announcement, made at Meta's Connect conference in late September, represented a potential threat to Character.AI, which raised an impressive $150 million in Series A funding earlier this year for its concepts around AI companions.

Features and availability

However, Character.AI's new group chat experience will not be offered free of charge. The feature is first being made available to c.ai+ subscribers for feedback and improvements. C.ai+ is the start-up's 9.99 $ monthly subscription plan that offers the ability to skip waiting rooms, access faster message generation and an exclusive community channel for feedback and support, among other things. The company says it will open up the feature to the general public at a later date.

At launch, Character's group chat is only available on the Character.AI mobile app on iOS and Android, but will later be rolled out on the web.

Character.AI application popularity

The company's app initially surpassed half a million installs in its first six days and is on track to catch ChatGPT in the US. Third-party data from market intelligence provider data.ai indicates that the app has nearly 30 million monthly active users worldwide, including around 7 million in the US. The company also estimates gross revenues from integrated purchases at $1.3 million, but c.ai+ is sold on the web, so this is not a complete picture of its overall revenues.