Character.AI's collection of virtual personalities, based on real and fictional sources, will speak thanks to the new Character Calls audio feature. AI-powered chatbots can now engage in two-way voice conversations for free in the startup's app.
Augmenting the synthetic people housed at Character.AI's hub with voices is supposed to make them more fun to talk to, according to the company. Users can tap a button in their chat window and start talking to the bot in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese or Chinese. Tapping while the bot is talking will pause it and you can resume texting in the same way.
Character counts
Character Calls is an extension of the Character Voices feature launched in March, which only allowed for audio responses from AI chatbots, not human voice interaction. Character.ai claims there are now over a million voice options available. For those who want to create their own Character.ai chatbot or already have one, the voice options incorporate many styles and accents.
The company tested the new feature before launch and said that more than 3 million people have already made more than 20 million calls. Those calls included people learning new languages, practicing for job interviews, and working on game characters and story ideas.
Character.ai was early to the market for virtual celebrities and AI-powered friends, but it may need this new feature to keep up with the recent competition. Meta now offers celebrity AI chatbots tied to official partnerships with those celebrities. And Google is reportedly working on doing something similar, potentially focusing on YouTube and YouTube influencers, as well as allowing people to design their own chatbots.
