Character.AI: What teachers need to know

Character.ai is a generative artificial intelligence tool that is really resonating with teens and young adults, says Elizabeth Radday, Ed.D., director of Research and Innovation at EdAdvance, one of six Regional Educational Service Centers in Connecticut.

Radday isn’t the only one who has set his sights on the Character.ai app, which offers users the chance to chat with historical figures, characters from TV shows, and even objects like toast. Google recently hired Character.ai founder Noam Shazeer to be co-director of Gemini, its flagship artificial intelligence program. Shazeer had worked at Google before founding Character.ai. technology/google-appoints-former-characterai-founder-co-lead-its-ai-models-2024-08-23/” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-appoints-former-characterai-founder-co-lead-its-ai-models-2024-08-23/” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>Google reportedly paid billions to get it back as part of a deal that also included a licensing agreement for Character.ai. However, the move makes Character.ai's future as a standalone app uncertain. After Google's move was announced, technology/tech-news/ai-startup-whose-co-founders-rejoined-google-lays-off-5-employees/articleshow/112934254.cms” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/ai-startup-whose-co-founders-rejoined-google-lays-off-5-employees/articleshow/112934254.cms” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>Character.ai laid off about 5% of its staff.

Regardless of its future role with Google, Character.ai doesn't yet have security or privacy features that would work in education, Radday says. But, he adds, it's something educators should consider because their students are using it and it could play an interesting educational role in the future.

In addition to speaking with Radday about Character.ai, I experimented with the app myself. Here's what educators should know.

<h2 id="what-you-need-to-know-about-character-ai-3″>What you need to know about Character.ai

ai/” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://character.ai/” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>Character.ai allows users, who can register for free, to talk to a variety of historical figures and fictional characters through a familiar chatbot interface.

Manga characters are very popular on the app, says Radday, who also co-hosts the show. ChatEdu Podcast on EdAdvance. To investigate the app for educational purposes, he spoke to Jim Halpert of “The Office” and a couple of chicken strips. The app even has a voice mode where characters will speak their answers. Users can also create their own characters and make them public so others can interact with them.

“I talked to Jim Halpert about pranking my coworker and it seems to match that person’s tone and vibe,” he says, adding that it’s different than trying to do something similar with another chatbot. “You can have ChatGPT play a role and say, ‘Answer my questions as if you were Henry Ford or Harriet Tubman. ’ But something about Character.ai makes it a little more character-centric.”

With Character.ai, I asked Gandalf the Grey for advice on how to work and live, but he mostly gave me the standard Hallmark card advice: “Make time each day for something fun.” But I was impressed by the quality of his voice, which sounded like the voice of a video game character, and could easily see that young people might enjoy this app. It’s clearly designed to be more fun than some of the other generative ai tools out there. Young people are using it for more than just fun and games, though.

“People are so interested that they end up having very intense conversations, either with characters they themselves have created or with characters other people have created,” Radday says.

Potential for education

Radday says privacy concerns currently limit the app’s use in educational settings. “A teacher can’t just go to a school and say, ‘Hey, everyone sign up for Character.ai and go talk to George Washington.’”

She adds: “That doesn’t mean that we don’t see the value in it and that it’s perhaps growing into something that schools can use, or that this model can be used to create a safe space for schools where children can go and have conversations with historical figures, book characters, etc.”

Of my experiments with Character.ai, I found the character creation tool to be the most fun. I used it to create a character based on one from a fiction novel I had started writing. The tool didn’t create the character as I had imagined, but talking to it was an interesting brainstorming exercise and gave me some ideas to explore. I could definitely see using it with students in a creative writing class for this purpose. Of course, privacy concerns need to be addressed before that happens.

In the meantime, I agree with Radday that it is a tool that educators should be aware of and consider when talking about generative ai and when teaching digital literacy.

Radday notes, however, that not everything about the app is positive. “Kids are no longer spending hours in their rooms watching TikToks and chatting with their friends. They’re now chatting with chatbots for hours,” she says. “There’s not even another real human being on the other end. And some of these chats can be dangerous for work or school in a number of ways, and I think that’s a real concern.”