Character.ai

Creators can build AI characters to handle common direct messages and story replies, thereby extending their reach and engaging with a broader audience. Meta has introduced AI Studio, a new platform allowing users to create, share, and discover custom AI characters without needing technical skills. The service, built on Llama 3.1, aims to democratise AI creation and enhance user interaction across Meta's apps. AI Studio enables users to design AI characters for various purposes, from generating memes to offering travel advice. Users can access the platform via ai.meta.com/ai-studio or within the Instagram app. The customisation process includes setting the AI's name, personality, and avatar, with options to start from pre-set templates or create from scratch. Creators can build AI characters to handle common direct messages and story replies, thereby extending their reach and engaging with a broader audience. AI characters can be shared on Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and the web. Meta has provided a step-by-step guide to assist users in creating their AI characters. Notable AI examples include: Instagram creators can utilise AI Studio to manage direct messages and story replies, with customisation options tailored to their content and preferences. Creator AIs are marked clearly to ensure transparency. "Our vision is to empower everyone who uses our products to create their own agents. Whether it's the millions of creators on our platform or hundreds of millions of small businesses, we aim to pull in all your content and quickly set up a business agent," said Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg. He added that this agent would interact with your customers, handle sales, customer support, and more. Meta has implemented policies to promote safe and responsible AI usage. AI Studio marks an initial step towards expanding user-driven AI creativity.

Instagram launches a new feature allowing users to create AI versions of themselves using Meta AI Studio. This tool enables the creation of personalized AI chatbots, marking a significant step in Meta's AI integration efforts.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming various sectors by introducing groundbreaking tools that significantly enhance productivity and foster creativity. The video below from Futurepedia shows us nine AI tools that distinguish themselves through their distinctive features and practical applications, catering to the needs of professionals across multiple fields. Skyglass is a catalyst for animators and game developers, offering a real-time 3D character environment and advanced facial motion capture capabilities. This powerful tool enables the creation of incredibly lifelike characters, elevating the quality of animations and gaming experiences. Although exclusively available on iPhone, the Pro Plan, priced at $18 per month, provides access to this innovative technology. 11 Labs is transforming the world of voice-over and content creation with its innovative speech-to-speech technology. By retaining the original speaker's inflection, emotion, and timing, this tool allows voice-over artists and content creators to maintain the authenticity of their work. With a modest $5 per month subscription, 11 Labs offers a cost-effective solution for professionals seeking high-quality voice reproduction. BGBye simplifies the process of background removal by leveraging the power of 10 different AI models. This user-friendly tool is a helpful for photographers and graphic designers who frequently need to isolate subjects from their backgrounds. The best part? BG by is entirely free to use and does not require any sign-up, making it accessible to professionals and enthusiasts alike. Google's experimental AI tools, available at labs.google, offer a wide range of innovative features for creative professionals. One standout tool is Gen Type, which empowers users to create unique fonts from prompts, opening up new possibilities for typography and design. These experimental tools showcase Google's commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI and providing innovative solutions for various industries. GEOSpy is an invaluable tool for journalists and researchers, as it can accurately identify photo locations, particularly for well-known landmarks. By helping users verify the authenticity of images, GEOS Spy contributes to maintaining the integrity of visual information in an era where fake news and manipulated images are increasingly prevalent. SoBrief.com harnesses the power of AI to summarize over 73,000 books, making it an indispensable resource for students and professionals who need to quickly grasp the key points of extensive texts. This free tool eliminates the need for sign-up, ensuring that users can access concise summaries without any hassle. This innovative Instagram-like app introduces a unique social media experience by featuring AI-generated users. Users can interact with these AI accounts, creating a novel platform for social media enthusiasts to explore. At $10 per month for unlimited interactions, this app offers an affordable way to engage with innovative AI technology in a social context. Foal provides a platform for running open-source AI models in the cloud, catering to the needs of developers and researchers who require scalable AI solutions. With its pay-as-you-go pricing model, Foul offers flexibility and cost-effectiveness for users who need to deploy and manage AI models in a cloud environment. WebSim transforms the way websites and games are created by allowing users to develop immersive, interactive digital experiences conversationally. This groundbreaking tool empowers individuals without coding knowledge to bring their ideas to life, democratizing the process of website and game development. These nine AI tools showcase the vast potential of artificial intelligence in transforming various industries. By offering innovative solutions that enhance productivity, creativity, and user experiences, these tools demonstrate the power of AI in reshaping the way we work and interact with technology. As AI continues to evolve, it is clear that these tools are just the beginning of a new era of technological advancement, promising to transform the way we approach challenges and opportunities across diverse sectors.

Maybe a lack of AI characters is what Quibi got wrong. At least, that's what one startup appears to believe. My Drama is a new short series app with over 30 shows, with a majority of them following a soap opera format in order to hook viewers. The app is now launching an AI-powered chatbot for viewers to get to know the characters in depth, bringing it in closer competition with companies like Character.AI, the a16z-backed chatbot startup. The short drama app was developed by Holywater, a Ukraine-based media tech startup founded by Bogdan Nesvit (CEO) and Anatolii Kasianov (CTO). The parent company also operates a reading app called My Passion, mainly known for its romance titles. Since its launch in April, My Drama has rapidly gained traction, boasting 1 million users and $3 million in revenue. Holywater has a strong track record with its products, generating $90 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) across all its offerings. Believe it or not, the short drama app market has taken off, much to Quibi's dismay. Recent app store data shows that during the first quarter of 2024, 66 short drama apps (ReelShort, DramaBox, and more) achieved record revenue of $146 million in global consumer spending, per app intelligence firm Appfigures. Holywater believes My Drama stands out among the increasingly crowd market due to its robust library of IP. Thanks to My Passion's thousands of books already published on the reading app, My Drama has a wealth of content to adapt into films. Plus, My Passion has an established fanbase who will likely be eager to see their favorite character come to life. By the end of the year, My Drama plans to release 100 titles. The company's next bet will introduce AI characters that can interact with viewers, creating an immersive storytelling experience. Upon launch, My Drama users will have the opportunity to engage with two fictional characters: Jaxon, the billionaire love interest from "The Shy Beauty and the Billionaire Beast," and Hayden, the heir of a formidable mafia family in "Love Captive to a Mafia Boss." After watching a few chapters of the series, the viewer is prompted to chat with the character. They can also ask the characters to send images. (My Drama doesn't allow NSFW content.) During a demo shared with TechCrunch, Nesvit and Kasianov walked us through what an interaction with Hayden would look like. The app guides you to build a relationship with him and earn his trust (he is a scary mafia boss, after all). He will quiz you on the events in the series, such as inquiring about the rival gang he is aiming to defeat. At the top of the screen is a meter measuring your ranking on Hayden's trust meter. The company explains this gamification tactic aims to increase engagement on the platform. The AI companions will also be accessible via a standalone app called My Imagination, which is currently in beta. With the new app, users can have more personalized conversations with the characters. Further down the line, they'll even be able to create their own characters, which is Character.AI's specialty. It's worth noting that the characters Jaxon and Hayden are portrayed by real human actors Nazar Grabar and Bodgan Ruban. At a time when actors are concerned about AI's impact on the industry, it's interesting that two actors are willing to give a company permission to use their likeness to be an AI companion. However, it's somewhat reassuring to know that they're being fairly compensated for it. According to Holywater, the compensation for being an AI companion can exceed their regular actor salary. Nesvit explained, "The payment system consists of a fixed rate plus additional royalties. Depending on the number of users and the time they spend in the chat, actors can now earn up to $10,000 per month. The more users they attract to the chat, the higher their royalty payment." The human writers and producers at My Drama leverage AI for some aspects of scriptwriting, localization, and voice acting. Notably, the company hires hundreds of actors to film content, all of whom have consented to the use of their likenesses for voice sampling and video generation. My Drama utilizes several AI models, including ElevenLabs, Stable Diffusion, OpenAI, and Meta's Llama 3. As many media companies claim, Holywater emphasizes the time and costs saved through the use of AI. For example, when filming a house fire, the company only spent around $100 using AI to create the video, compared to the approximately $8,000 it would have cost without it. The use of AI enables My Drama to produce content in just one week. "Our goal by the end of the year is to drop the costs to at least 40% by using AI," said Nesvit. Additionally, the company plans to further iterate on the AI chatbot feature, adding a capability where new scenes appear after users interact with characters, which, in a way, allows them to act as the co-creator for the series. It'll also launch video and voice chatting capabilities sometime in the future. Character.AI recently introduced the ability for users to voice chat with characters. My Drama is available on the web and on iOS and Android devices. While a few episodes are free to watch, the app puts the majority of the episodes behind a paywall. Users have to purchase one of its coin packs, which range from $2.99 to $19.99 per week, to unlock premium titles, ad-free viewing, and early access to content.

Hedra, the AI character generation platform has launched a new version of its model and it includes even more realistic head movements and facial expressions. There is also a new 'stylize' feature that lets you put your character in different outfits, add backdrops and even change their face to a Lego character or anime. Character is a new family of foundation models from Hedra designed to create more consistent and realistic humans through AI video, giving creators more control over the final output. Initially, the focus is on lip-syncing and head animation. Version 1.5 adds to that capability. Hedra offers a generous free plan for people to try it out, and I've found it works with any human image including photos, drawings and even action figures. It animated both the head and face fairly accurately in time to the words used in the voice track. Putting Hedra Character 1.5 to the test I created five characters, first through an image prompt with Flux.1 running locally on my laptop, then using ElevenLabs to create a voice for each character. Finally, I used the voice and image with Hedra to generate a video. Each image is of a person looking straight to the 'camera' with each different enough to be a useful test. I then ran stylize on two of them, pushing it to see completely different looks, as well as a subtle change to the outfit and background. Beneath each description, you'll see the full prompt I gave to Flux.1 to create each character. 1. The doctor First, we have a middle-aged doctor wearing a lab coat. I then stylised it with a bright over-the-top outfit full of splashes of color with a colorful background. It hasn't done a bad job. There are some artifacts around the mouth and the head movement is a little exaggerated but it reflects the tone of the sound well. The voice matching isn't AI, I found a suitable voice on ElevenLabs. 2. The builder Next, we have a builder character. This isn't a test of the AI image generator but rather of Hedra's lip-syncing and head movement animation capabilities. The head movement is more natural here with minimal artifacts but the blinking is unnatural. It is still a marked improvement on Hedra Character-1 and some other AI lip-syncing tools. 3. The barista The barista character had the most natural blinking of the tests I ran. She again had slightly exaggerated lip-movement but overall it was a good render. It can maintain the friendly demeanor of the initial image and the voice. 4. The teacher I'm not overly happy with the way this image turned out, looking like a bad staff ID photo rather than a video of someone talking to a camera but the realism in the image seemed to help Hedra. 5. The farmer Finally an older face. I had the audio create a pause in the middle and Hedra accurately reflected the animation of taking in a breath/gathering thoughts. As with all the tests, the mouth and head movements were exaggerated compared to reality but it is a big improvement. Final thoughts I was already a fan of the way v1 animated lip movement but with 1.5 Hedra take things up a notch, adding more natural head movement and facial expressions. Stylise is also a powerful addition and gives us some insight into what we might see with the final, fully controllable AI video model being developed by Hedra. It lets you easily adapt any element of your character photo, change the way it looks or even just the clothes it is wearing in the image. The only thing it needs now is a widescreen and portrait option, then it can be better integrated into projects made using the growing number of AI video products including Runway and Kling. More from Tom's Guide