One thing the Wordle craze has taught us is that a light brainteaser—and a pinch of dissociation—can be a welcome reprieve from the daily monotony. Now, a chatbot service known as Character.AI has combined our fixation on word games with a healthy dose of AI-powered competition.
Your Favorite AI Characters Can Be Your New Daily Game Opponents
With a sea of AI services out there, companies need to find ways to stand out. As a startup standing against heavyweights like OpenAI, Character.AI has made itself known for its digital personas, allowing you to choose from or create your own virtual character to chat with. Now, Character.AI has gone one step further by adding word games to its platform.
While Character.AI may be leveraging our obsession with games like The New York Times’ Wordle and Connections, these games are not solo ventures—they’re competitive. Your competition: an AI character.
At the time of writing, there are two games available on Character.AI’s mobile and desktop web apps: Speakeasy and War of Words.
According to TechCrunch’s report on the development, only paid subscribers and a “limited set of users on the free plan” can access games.
Speakeasy
With Speakeasy, you are essentially trying to get the AI chatbot to use a specific word—without using five established related words. This is reminiscent of a board game known as Taboo, where you might need your fellow player to say “brie” while avoiding the words “cheese”, “creamy,” “milk,” “dairy,” and “cow.” The challenge is compounded with the fact that the chatbot is playing in character, and will only communicate in a certain way.
War of Words
There’s less comradery in War of Words, which involves engaging in a verbal duel with an AI chatbot. An AI referee will rate your argument against the chatbot, and decide winners for each round. While I’m not sure how impartial an AI referee will be between a human and an AI chatbot, or what the metrics are for a winning argument, the game could serve as good debate practice.
The Guardrails of AI Chatbots
The introduction of games could be Character.AI’s strategy to draw subscribers back in since its mass extermination of copyrighted characters in November 2024. Futurism reported that the company accredited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as the motive behind the mass removal of fictional characters.
After users discovered that the platform’s beloved Harry Potter characters were gone, rumors spread regarding a dispute with Warner Bros. Discovery. However, Character.AI did not confirm that any dispute prompted its decision to—well, use the Vanishing Spell on its Potter chatbots.
This will likely be an ongoing struggle with a platform that supports user-created content. After all, where there are guardrails, there will be loopholes. For example, a Character.AI chatbot named “the boy who lived” survived after the initial sweep of “Harry Potter” personas. With fandom being a huge draw to the immersive AI platform, it only makes sense that users would be disheartened by the new restrictions.
While DMCA-protected names may no longer exist on the platform, there seem to be other sources of entertainment on Character.AI, including historical figures, bots designed to educate you on specific topics, and now games. Moreover, we don’t know what Character.AI has up its sleeve. For instance, if the games are a hit, the platform could design more, and open up games to free users.
