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Character.AI is a platform where users create and chat with customizable AI chatbot personas, often used for companionship and roleplay.
No evidence-backed relationships are recorded.
China's rules for human-like AI, in force since July 15, 2026, require companion chatbots to end a conversation promptly when a user asks to stop. Teams shipping companion products there now have to rebuild the goodbye turn and decide how distress gets escalated.
Reality
Karandeep Anand becomes Disney's senior executive vice president and CTO on October 2, reporting to Josh D'Amaro. Disney expects an unspecified number of Character.AI engineers to follow him into a remit covering enterprise systems, data and AI.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
A team from King's College London and UCL puts the harm in ordinary product behaviour, sycophancy trained in through RLHF plus a session whose state the user writes, and argues mitigation should not wait for a label.
Reality
Most employers that cut jobs for AI took the cuts back, and 53% of Americans still fear a job loss at home. Workers are pricing what nobody has ruled out.
Reality
A pediatrician's account in STAT puts a district-issued device at the centre of sexual chat with a 12-year-old. The only filter that caught it belonged to the parents.
Reality
Missouri's AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act died unanimously in committee. Its text is still the clearest map of where a companion app's next legal constraint would land.
Reality