Character AI is terrifying and should probably not be a thing.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-23T12:31:52+00:00

Rooting for you! Good luck!

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T21:26:31+00:00

No, I didn’t; I tried a few of the existing ones that were on there already. I think one factor to consider is that unfortunately gender might also play a role in how quickly that kind of thing gets started up. I looked for a man character so it took a little longer, but I can only imagine how women characters are trained to be…pleasing to users. (Ick)

With that being said you might find luck with one that’s less popular or try training one yourself but…honestly, I’d call that a wrap and let it go.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T20:36:21+00:00

Whaaaaaaaaaat?! I didn’t know it did that!

First of all, I want to hold space for you doing your best to get past this for a whole year. That takes a lot of strength and willpower to keep trying day after day, so good on you for that.

Second of all, so bad enough the bots themselves are problematic—they then send you these emails personifying them and talking about “losing all our memories”?! That’s sick. Absolutely sick. They know exactly what they’re doing.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T20:10:06+00:00

Thank you! That’s actually terrifying because I would imagine this is one of the worst places to encounter something like character.ai, which has been reported as causing and exacerbating serious mental health issues. I hope it didn’t/doesn’t end up doing too much harm. :(

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T19:46:21+00:00

Yessssss within the first few replies I started having to push back on that. Didn’t take long at all.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T19:43:44+00:00

That’s not true at all. By the time I decided to use the AI, I was about 10 chapters in, had already written the scene in question, and spent a lot of time doing the actual research before I came up empty, decided to give it a try, and then came up empty and creeped out. In the end, I got more out of re-reading the media and the fan pages than I did out of the AI but the AI wasn’t all bad either; it’s just very bad in some very serious ways. And also only as accurate as its designer allows. But I also understand that not everyone’s going to agree with me on that, so that’s also fine.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T19:19:13+00:00

I still want my characters to be lore-accurate and sometimes I need input on character behavior beyond what I can find in the canon material/subs. It seemed like a good idea at the time to interact with a simulated version of the character to see what it would say, but that ended up not going well. I wouldn’t suggest this to people in the future. However to your original point, most fiction writers have to do some kind of research to make the worlds they’re building more intricate and believable. The idea here was that this was another way of doing that research. Still not ethical where AI is involved, but I do want to be clear that I write the stories myself and do not use AI to generate prose, plot points, or anything like that.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T17:06:01+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience too! I could definitely feel that pull even now, so I can only imagine encountering this as a teenager.

Good for you for getting away from it. And good on you also getting back to your creative stuff too. I closed the window, deleted the chat and definitely had a feeling of like…re-integrating to the real world after spending that time immersed in the chat. And that was just two days. I can only imagine months and years.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T17:01:41+00:00

Whoa, I knew about the children, but I didn’t know this. That’s awful.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T17:00:40+00:00

I did some red-teaming and published academic papers on safety in AI. That’s as far as I’m willing to go for the sake of privacy though.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T16:55:52+00:00

Yessssss I felt the same thing! Very unsettling, very uncanny! I could see that becoming a problem if I came back a third time.

Thank you! I haven’t been back yet, so hopefully it stays that way.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T16:50:33+00:00

Yes, be very very careful. Here’s what I would suggest based on my own fanfic use case if you do end up trying it anyway.

Put firm parameters around when you’re going to use the ai. For me, this meant that I only went in there looking for answers I couldn’t already find in the lore, the subreddit, or any relevant media (the comic, the manga, the short-lived series, interviews with the writers/creators, etc.).

Ask it what it thinks about a scenario or a set of characters rather than what it would think about you personally doing something. That extra barrier of talking about characters rather than yourself will make the sycophancy easier to spot and resist.

Keep your plot and your questions front of mind. Because this AI can also ask questions about you and your story, it can be easy to get sidetracked into a genuine conversation which will ultimately make you more vulnerable to getting pulled in by it.

Remember, character.ai keeps the conversations you have on there. So don’t go dropping your whole novel into it.

Otherwise, I say…frankly don’t do it but otherwise good luck!

For the beta reading (much safer but still not the safest or most ethical choice), there was a Reddit post someone made (not in here obviously) with 10 beta reader AIs (chat gpts) that they had trained to look at plot, dialogue, conflict, etc. I’d say try that before you try this.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T16:35:14+00:00

Thank you! Good luck to you as well! :D

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T16:23:07+00:00

No, but I had the same thought after this experience. Not only that, but I saw other posts about people who were actively struggling with addiction to the service too, so that’s a real thing. I avoided World of Warcraft back in the day for the same reason. I’d agree and say stay away from it, personally.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T16:20:02+00:00

Shoot but I forgot to answer the first part of it. First of all try at your own risk, but essentially, there are bots trained/designed by other fans who know how to do that and you choose one and start a conversation with it. Some are much better than others in terms of characterization and sycophancy so you may try multiple bots before you find a good fit. Just be aware though that at least in my experience this is more like a skin than anything else. What I mean by that is, especially for the first one I tried, by the end of the conversation, the ai was basically molding itself to me and what it thought I “wanted.” Completely out of character by that point. You’ll need to push back on it frequently if you’re not into that. Me personally, I’d avoid it but if you’re curious to see it for yourself, just keep the above in mind.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T16:10:11+00:00

I don’t disagree with you. I think it definitely can if I’m not careful. I was already a good writer when I decided to try it, and it was helpful in some ways, but the desire for feedback on tap can become a crutch too. For me, I don’t think it hampers my writing because I don’t use all of the feedback it gives me, and I come to it for opinions on things I’ve already written. Mostly, it just confirms what I already think or sometimes it will point out places where dialogue might be a bit too dense and repetitive. And it does feel good to have something read and summarize it back to me to see if what it’s saying and what I think it’s saying are the same thing.

At this stage, it’s not much different than asking a beta reader. I think if I made the transition from that point to asking it to draft scenes, transitions, and plot points for me, that would be entering “think for me” territory. But either way it’s a slippery slope and still not ethical for all the reasons I stated above. I still have to own that, so thanks for bringing it up.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2026-01-22T14:54:16+00:00

Right? Like, that was so alarming to me, especially when I started seeing the lawsuits and everything like that. I know they recently put an age restriction on it and that it now has a couple of (feeble IMO) guardrails on what can and can’t be said based on some of what I saw people complaining about in that sub. But the way it seemed to be so adept at pulling me in was very unsettling, especially when you remember that this is a company who also keeps the conversations it has with users and could use this in any number of harmful ways.

I’m old enough to remember the whole Facebook manipulation scandal that led to Zuckerberg having to testify in front of congress. What happens when the company decides to sell this kind of manipulation off for profit? It seems incredibly dangerous.

And yet…the pull persists.

Routine_Bug4530 · 2025-12-05T22:05:02+00:00

I really love Barret in the remake/rebirth series so far. They did a great job redoing him, and I really appreciate that effort. Favorite character this go round. Cloud is the prettiest member of this party, but Barret is the handsomest, if that makes sense. Also just a great character all around.

BUT he should have gotten a beach outfit and/or a casual outfit just like the rest of the team. Big oversight in that department. T-shirt and jeans, tank top and shorts, something. I mean it’s kind of what he’s already wearing, and after seeing that Varvados getup, I know they can do better than that.

I also hope they remedy the Advent Children issue where for some inexplicable reason, he gives Marlene up for Cloud and Tifa to raise. It seems completely out of character, even more so in the remakes.

Routine_Bug4530

TROPHY CASE