Google just appointed former Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer as co-technical lead for Gemini, joining heavyweights Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals. Shazeer recently returned to Google following a massive $2.7 billion licensing and talent deal to turbocharge its fight against OpenAI.
Google just brought back Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas to join DeepMind, alongside signing a non-exclusive licensing deal for the startup’s tech. Most staff will remain at Character.AI under an interim CEO, with the startup pivoting toward third-party models. It is another big-tech reverse acqui-hire that regulators are already eyeing closely.
Character.AI just rolled out a two-way voice calling feature, letting users talk out loud to its AI characters in real time. It supports multiple languages including English, Chinese, and Spanish, with low latency and tap-to-interrupt controls. Why it matters: Turning text bots into voice buddies makes role-play and language practice feel far more personal.
Character.ai is reportedly exploring research partnerships with Meta and xAI to collaborate on pre-training and AI model development. Sources say the talks center on joint research rather than an acquisition, with no deal signed yet. Facing rising antitrust scrutiny over buyouts, tech giants are increasingly relying on strategic tie-ups to tap frontier tech.
A deep dive into the top 50 AI tools reveals they generated over 24 billion visits between September 2022 and August 2023, with ChatGPT commanding a staggering 14 billion visits alone. Character AI and Google Bard took the next spots in net growth. Conversational chatbots drove the bulk of web attention, with more than 63% of users logging on from mobile devices.
Character.AI just rolled out Character Group Chat, allowing c.ai+ subscribers to chat with multiple AI personas and human friends in the same room. Users can run text adventure games, host multi-character book clubs, or debate historical figures simultaneously. The feature is currently live on iOS and Android apps, with web support coming soon.
Character.ai is catching up to ChatGPT on mobile in the U.S., reaching 4.2 million monthly active users compared to ChatGPT's nearly 6 million. Even more striking is the demographic split: nearly 60% of Character.ai's web audience is aged 18 to 24, while ChatGPT sits at just 27%. Entertainment-focused companion AI is showing serious staying power with younger users.
