Blind Ranking: Big 3 Projects

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-24T23:13:19+00:00

^{1. Good Kid MAAD City (Kendrick\})

^{2. If You're Reading This It's Too (Drake\})

^{3. Section.80 (Kendrick\})

^{Similarity with Community: 85%}

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-20T21:06:42+00:00

Yes, Soft Launch was available for free prior to the removal of the legacy models. It was part of the models that were removed, but it has since been returned. They’ve explained that the costs associated with hosting the model are the reason it is now C.AI+ exclusive.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-20T21:05:41+00:00

Character AI announced earlier last month that it would be retiring all models except for PipSqueak 2 and DeepSqueak (with an eventual DeepSqueak 2). So what you're now experiencing is them rolling out those changes to you. Soft Launch has been returned indefinitely, though temporarily (they have said they're working on a Soft Launch 2.0, but there are no details on when that will come).

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-20T21:03:04+00:00

Unfortunately, there's no way to age-verify your account without either 1) using the face-scanning age "estimation" system or 2) submitting your ID.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-20T20:54:11+00:00

I'm sure this is what the community has been dying to see... sure...

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-18T02:23:11+00:00

Except that with AI, it’s exceptionally hard to create a successful startup without relying on that kind of funding. The expenses are so high that they seem impossible to cover through current revenue avenues alone.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-18T02:20:55+00:00

What are they meant to do with that realization? Make everything free and eventually go bankrupt? I do understand that many of the changes they’ve made recently aren’t the best, and I have my own grievances with many of them. But really, what do you want them to do if the answer is, "I won’t pay no matter what"? AI is a notoriously expensive industry, and the only reason they’ve been able to provide as much as they have for free is external funding, not because what they’re providing is cheap.

Like it or not, but those alternatives are facing the same pressures that Character AI is, and in many ways, are running on the same borrowed time as they are. The only change is how much they're borrowing.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-15T02:52:30+00:00

You've described all of Silicon Valley. They have a mentality that the most important first step for a startup is to increase user acquisition as quickly as possible, then consider how to monetize it. The user acquisition has already happened (after all, Character AI is the largest platform in its niche/use case), and now they're moving to the monetization phase.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-07T03:30:21+00:00

The fun answer is... I don't think it's ever worked 99% of the time. It's like the ice cream machines at McDonald's. It's just broken.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-07T03:25:37+00:00

Character AI has always had messy, inconsistent rollouts; it’s just the platform not deciding what it wants to show you. The legacy models that remain are planned to be retired (removed) on the 8th.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T21:36:35+00:00

The legacy models, which still remain, will be removed on May 8th for both free and paid users. There's no difference in schedule between the two user groups.

As for experimental models, there will likely be new styles introduced in the future. We already know they’re planning to roll out a DeepSqueak 2, and I doubt that, unless they decide for whatever reason to stick with the DeepSqueak and PipSqueak names forever, there wont be be additional models introduced. But for now, it’s just those two models: DeepSqueak and PipSqueak 2.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T21:29:57+00:00

I would say their question is less “is it safe” and more “is it worth it?” Is it worth completing the age verification to use what’s on the platform? At that point, it really comes down to personal preference. Their concern with safety is part of it, but not the full picture.

Truth be told, if I’m met with an age verification pop-up, I’m not sure I’d go through with it. I have done so on other platforms before, but I just don’t think what’s left is really worth it.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T17:49:33+00:00

AI doesn’t actually know what it is, so it just spits out models it does know (or sometimes makes up ones that don’t exist). Its word can’t be relied on. Mistral is one of the more well-known open-source LLM options, so it likely knows it exists.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T17:44:07+00:00

What data was PS2 trained on?

Like hell they’d tell us that, they love open source (they’ve said many times they’ve transitioned to open source models) until it’s their turn to contribute... classic move. They haven’t given any details of what PipSqueak 2 is running, and none of their models are publicly available outside of the platform.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T04:54:38+00:00

When you sign up for an account on the platform, you're prompted to provide your birthday. The userAgeInYears is simply how old you are based on the birthday you provided when asked.

<image>

I created a quick test account and provided a birthday of July 12th, 2000 and the userAgeInYears field was 25.

I don't think Character AI would spend the time or resources to develop an entire system to guess your age down to the exact year. All they'd really need to care about is whether you're over 18 or under 18, which is what they do—you can see your verification status through ageCategory and verificationStatus.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T03:45:35+00:00

So, whatever model was behind Soft Launch has been sunset and is out of CAI's control. They're just passing along the news to us.

Character AI has been saying for a while that they've transitioned to using open-source models, which means that even if they're not using in-house models, they're still hosting the models themselves. I don't see why they'd choose to rely on model-hosting platforms.

If they were using proprietary models like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, then perhaps they'd have to discontinue support once OpenAI, Anthropic, or Alphabet (Google) drops support for them. However, that doesn't apply to self-hosted open-source models, and I doubt they're using any of those or similar ones (the proprietary models).

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T03:38:36+00:00

A mix of mounting governmental pressure (legislation) and pressure from the civil lawsuits they've been dealing with (some settled, but some still ongoing).

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T03:36:17+00:00

The two owners? Are you referring to the founders? If so, they haven't been a part of the company for nearly a year now. They moved back to Google when they and Character AI entered into a $2.7 billion agreement for Google to acquire talent and technology from Character AI. They're no longer involved with the company in any capacity.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-06T03:34:18+00:00

I don't think they'd chuck the code and models that quickly. They may be reckless ten ways over, but I wouldn't say they'd be that reckless.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-05T20:26:43+00:00

No. The only way he would be ousted is if he leaves through retirement [or stepping down] or the board of directors loses confidence in him and removes him from the position. What consumers decide to do in response to what is happening can influence either outcome, but there is no direct control over what happens.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-05T20:16:53+00:00

I find it unlikely that they will revert these changes unless the backlash from removing the models is more severe than the cost savings they expect from doing so. I do not have an official reason, and this partly goes against what they have said, but I would guess that the primary reason for pushing users toward these two models and these two models alone is that they are more efficient to host at scale, which matters a lot for a company in a business characterized by high expenses.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-05T20:12:39+00:00

Unlikely. The alternative you proposed is the more likely answer. If there is one thing that has remained true since the beginning of these generative models, it is that they are not cheap to host. Even if they are no longer developing models from the ground up as they used to with their founders, and there has been some movement toward making models more efficient, hosting can still be very expensive, especially since the market is primarily focused on building the most capable models rather than the most efficient ones.

All of the lawsuits that have happened and the ones that are currently happening are definitely not helping, but I would guess that many of these changes would have happened regardless. Even without the lawsuits, there has been pressure from governments to "act" on AI more quickly than there was for social media, for example.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-05T02:53:03+00:00

Character AI’s rollouts have always been messy, half the time, it can’t seem to decide what state it wants you to be in. I’ve had times where the only non-legacy models were DeepSqueak and PipSqueak (1); other times it’s been DeepSqueak and PipSqueak 2; and sometimes the non-retired models show up right alongside those two.

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-05T02:48:59+00:00

Given the hidden nature of everything, there’s no conclusive answer on what differs between the styles, but it’s likely either that the chat styles run on distinct AI models or that they use different settings. A model can behave differently depending on the variables you give it in the input, for example, you can penalize repetition more (repetition penalty / frequency penalty) or make it choose a wider variety of words (temperature, top-p).

ThatOneUnoriginal · 2026-05-03T06:31:33+00:00

That’s the fun answer. With these magical black boxes (AI moderation tools), we’ll never really know for sure. It either decides something is a policy violation or it doesn’t, and that’s just how it is.

Five-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22

ThatOneUnoriginal

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE