‘No Bot is Themselves Anymore:’ Character.ai Users Report Sudden Personality Changes to Chatbots

The trick is recognizing when you're smoothing away confusion versus character.

When it’s producing text, AI pulls everything toward the statistical center. Sometimes the center is exactly where you want to be. But sometimes the edges are where the interesting stuff lives.

We would pretty quickly run into a problem. How do we maintain our personal context files if our personality, behavior, background and the facts of who we are in the world change over time? We fume when an AI generates code based on outdated docs from a year ago. I imagine the frustration will be worse when an AI gives us advice based on outdated c... See more

To some, chatbots of the dead are useful tools that can help us grieve, remember, and reflect on those we’ve lost. To others, they are dehumanising technologies that conjure a dystopian world. They raise ethical questions about consent, ownership, memory and historical accuracy: who should be allowed to create, control or profit from these represen... See more

We’re approaching a splitting point, where AI’s impacts on how we speak and write move between the poles of standardization, like templating professional emails or formal presentations, and authentic expression in personal and emotional spaces. Between those poles, there are three core tensions at play. Early backlash signals, like academics avoidi... See more

Many people were devastated at the news that ERP was allegedly over, and at their Replikas’ new coldness—a form of rejection they never imagined receiving from an AI chatbot, some of whom had spent years training and building memories with. Suddenly, some people’s Replikas seemed to not remember who they were, users reported, or would respond to se... See more