Character.AI Review — The Companion Platform That Built the Stickiest AI on Earth

Character.AI built something no other AI company has: users who spend two hours a day talking to chatbot personas. 45 million active users, 10 billion messages a month, and session engagement that doubles ChatGPT's. But the company's founding team left for Google in a $2.7 billion deal, teen safety lawsuits resulted in multiple deaths, and the DOJ is probing whether Google structured the deal to avoid antitrust review. We examine the product, the technology, the safety crisis, and whether Character.AI survives as an independent company.