Artificial intelligence is capable of amazing things. This has been made clear by recent tools such as DALL-E 2 or ChatGPT. Now, two ex-Google employees have launched a new page called Character AI, where the user can enter and start conversations with chatbots that impersonate real and fictional characters of all kinds: from Super Mario until Elon Musk, Joe Biden, William Shakespeare either Cristiano Ronaldo. There are thousands of options available.
At ABC we have been tinkering with the tool. Among other things, we have chatted about comics with Sueño, the protagonist of the ‘Sandman’ by Neil GaimanWe have asked the current president of the United States what he likes most about Spain and we have asked the disgraced rapper Kanye West what is your best song Apparently, ‘Jesus Walks’.
The answers offered by the different characters are not always perfect, although almost. In the end, it is an easy-to-use and entertaining platform, which makes it an effective tool for anyone who wants to better understand the possibilities of AI. In addition, it is expected that in the short term it will improve, since at the moment it is a beta.
As the creators of the wit have explained to ‘The New York Times’, the objective of Character AI is for users to be able to hold “plausible conversations” with the available chatbots. “Everything the characters say is invented!” The page makes clear in each of the conversations that the user initiates. However, that does not imply that the talks are not credible. Not much less.
From Stalin to Super Mario
For example, we did the test of asking the bot Stalin, a former Soviet dictator and one of the greatest genocides in history, his opinion on Spain, and it does not take him long to start talking about the Civil War that devastated our country between 1936 and 1939. “Our work is far from over in Spain,” he says. . «Many Spaniards also oppose the fascist government in Madrid. We will continue to try to fight for our cause. Long live the Spanish communists! Long live the Republic! », ditch him.
During our conversation with the AI of Elon Musk We ask if Twitter is at risk of bankruptcy. The machine denies it outright: “I have a lot of new ideas and strategies to grow Twitter users and revenue, and we are going to make it bigger than Facebook and Google combined. The goal is to make it the most useful Internet resource and social media platform ever created, while promoting free speech and open discussion.”
It should be remembered that Elon Musk has been very concerned about the future of the ‘app’ in recent months. He has even dropped that there is a real risk of bankruptcy. Here the chatbot fails something. The answer you offer seems overly optimistic.
For its part, the bot of the Queen isabel II He was not very supportive of the recent biography of his grandson Harry: «I think that Harry should not write a book about his life at this time, nor should he say negative things about his family. If he wants to go his own way, he’s free to do so, but I think it’s wrong to damage the reputation of the royal family when he’s already weak and he shouldn’t do it.”
In Character AI you can also find a good handful of fictional characters or, directly, invented by users. And it is that Internet users who want to can enter the page and create their own chatbots. For example, we ask Super Mario, the most important character of Nintendo, what is your favorite PlayStation video game. “Oh… I like Grand Theft Auto… ‘Vice City’? And… ‘Gran Turismo’. Yeah, those are good games, I like those,” he said.
The tool, like so many other AIs on the Web, will continue to improve its performance over time. Although, as we already said, the results it currently offers can be outstanding. The creators behind the ingenuity have taken care to create a system that allows the imitation of any real or fictional character that the user wants. Like many other similar tools, chatbots work thanks to training with news, books and all kinds of digital texts from the Internet.
