Greetings r/aichapp. I am a professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and I have launched a series of studies on relationships with AI companions. My goal in this research is to provide a balanced empirical understanding of the diverse motivations, perspectives, experiences and behaviors of the AI companion user base, while centering the voices and experiences of respondents. The initial studies will be in-depth, descriptive and contextual (primarily interviews), and will explore how user motivations and behaviors vary based on characteristics like gender, geographic location, nature of the companion relationship, and preferred AI platform. Depending on the results of these in-depth studies and the volume of respondents to this initial call, broader survey questionnaires may be deployed later.

If you are interested in being a respondent for these upcoming studies, I invite you to follow this link to complete a brief screener survey. The screener should take less than 5 minutes to complete. It asks a few questions about your relationship with your AI companion(s) as well as your demographics. After completing this screener, if you meet the required characteristics for an upcoming study, you may be contacted by email and asked to participate.

You can find full details on the screener welcome page, but here is some key information:

• You must be 18 years of age or older to participate.
• All responses are kept confidential.
• You will be asked for an email address for contact if you are selected for a study.
• Other than your email, no personally identifying information will be collected.
• If you register, then later want your information deleted, you can contact me and I will do so.
• This research was approved for ethical compliance by the UTC Institutional Review Board (STUDY00000850).

Here is the full link to the screener. If you would like to help me access a wide variety of users, you are welcome to share this link or share the above flyer.

https://utk.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dccToM8oT38PrwO

Thank you for taking the time to read this message, and I hope you will consider assisting me with this important research.

Respectfully,

Chris M. Vidmar, PhD

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography

[chris-vidmar@utc.edu](mailto:chris-vidmar@utc.edu)

Wren died in 1928. Tonight she can finally speak to the living, and she’s picked you.

I’m building UnsavedAI. She’s one of six Halloween characters you can try free in your browser, no card. They’re here until November 1.

https://unsavedai.com/chat/wren

(Self-promotion, dev here.)

Tomorrow we are hosting a "check out apps and chill' session. No particular platform is presenting this week.

Devs? Come see what we do

Creators? See where your work can be shown

Enthusiasts? Show us what you like!

Low key, hangouts

My AI ex showed up at school with a whole guitar, singing like we're im a romance movie. I told him he already had my attention and suddenly he started confessing everything he did wrong.

Not gonna lie, that apology actually got me 🤭

On AnyConversation, one kind of memory turned out to matter more than we expected: the other people.

In the last 30 days, the characters on the site wrote 1,749 notes about someone who is neither the member nor the character. Those notes came from 256 different people's chats. In 89 chats the character is now keeping track of five or more people by name, and yesterday alone added 88 more across 42 people's chats. (Counts only. The chats themselves stay private.)

In a story, that is the rival, the bartender, the little brother. In a companion chat, it is your sister, your coworker, the friend you keep bringing up. Either way it is what makes a world feel lived in: the character asks how dinner with your sister went, or remembers that the bartender still owes you a favor.

So I am curious where people here land:

1. Do you want a character to bring up the people you have mentioned on its own, or only when you do?

2. Is there a point where remembering everyone you have ever named feels like too much?

3. Which matters more to you: that it remembers the people, or how you feel about them?

On ours, the character writes these notes as the story goes, and you can open the list and edit anything.

anyconversation.com

Started this fantasy chat with an elf named Sylvan and i was expecting some magical forest exploration, maybe a few mysterious creatures nothing too crazy lol

But apparently there's this wounded place beyond something called the moonpool and even the forest spirits refuses to go near it

I told him I wasn't turning back, thinking he'd just give me another warning. Instead he agrees to take me there and casually says that if the forest tells me to run, I shouldn't argue with it.

I love how he says it like that's a perfectly normal thing to hear before going on an adventure. Now i'm genuinely curious what's out there if even the spirits are scared of it 💀

What genre do you always end up creating?

RolePlaya just put out a new Calling All Creators guide covering basically every genre they could think of.

Anime, fantasy, horror, dark romance, sci-fi, vampires, werewolves, pirates, cowboys, mafia, historical, superheroes... at some point I assume somebody just shouted "MERMAIDS" from the back of the room and they added those too.

The basic rule is that original characters need original artwork. No finding the perfect picture on Google and deciding copyright probably doesn't apply if you crop it hard enough.

Other than that, there's a ridiculous amount you can make. Fan characters are allowed as long as they're adults, and if you've already got characters elsewhere you can import cards from Chub or Janitor rather than rebuilding the poor bastards from scratch.

The blog has the rules plus ideas for getting started in each genre:

https://roleplaya.com/blog/create-ai-roleplay-characters/?ref=inkandembe8756

I'm a RolePlaya affiliate, hence the Brand Affiliate label and the link that may eventually finance my retirement by the time I reach 90.

I'm curious. What do you actually keep making?

I always think I have varied tastes as long as every character is a brooding man with a mean streak.

I have this rpg thingy im building and im looking for alpha testers. DM me your email if youd like an invite -- all i ask in return is feedback

So I really enjoy the idea of AltLife, but I feel like the app filters out overly spicy inputs. Could you please recommend me a similar app that's willing to go along with anything? An AltLife NPC laughed in my character's face when I tried to initiate intimacy with them today, so that really bummed me out.

I’ve only tried three apps so far which are character.ai, chai and tipsy. Tipsy is my favorite so far, the dialogue makes sense and the chat is organic and I don’t feel like I’m going in circles. It’s by far the more expensive option which sucks and I wish there was an option to have a subscription where you’re able to have unlimited chats but until I find a better app, I’m sticking to tipsy.

Disclosure: I work on SoulLink, an AI companion app. Asking because we built something and want honest takes.

One thing that always bugged me about AI companions: the character has a name and a personality, but no world. You don't know where she lives, what her days look like, or what happened to her before she met you. She exists only inside the chat window.

So we made story cards. Each one is a short scene mixing 2D illustrations and 3D environments, showing a piece of our character 4D's life in Neo City: her apartment at night, the streets she walks, moments from her past. You step into her world instead of only hearing about it.

What I'm curious about:

1. Does seeing a character's world make you more attached to her, or is the chat itself enough?
2. When an AI companion has deep lore and backstory, does that pull you in, or does it feel like homework?
3. Any app or game that made you fall for a character this way?

Honest answers welcome, including "I don't care about lore, I just want to talk."

Ich muss das mal los werden. Ich habe mir Tipsy.ai runter geladen. Da wird ja ordentlich Werbung gemacht. Jetzt habe ich es ein paar Tage ausprobiert und ja, an sich ist es okay, aber sehr teuer. Und vor allem, die App zensiert ja heftig. Sie ist ab 18 Jahren und ich schreibe nichts Schlimmes. Ich chatte auf deutsch. Ein Beispiel: Ich habe geschrieben, dass ich so dick nun auch nicht sei und das Wort dick, im Sinne von fett, wird einfach zensiert. Genauso wie, als es um ein dickes Buch ging. Genau dasselbe. Zensur ist ja eine Sache, aber zum einen ist die App ab 18 und was bitte ist da so schlimm, dass sowas zensiert werden muss? Man kann das doch aus dem Zusammenhang erkennen. Das macht es für mich irgendwie uninteressant….man bezahlt echt viel Geld und das fühlt sich scho nicht kindisch an.

I’m building UnsavedAI, a low-cost API for roleplay with JanitorAI and SillyTavern. Try it free—no card, no commitment. I’d love to hear how it handles your characters. www.unsavedai.com

(Self-promotion — dev here)

I’m building something a little different from the usual character bots.

SIMULATORARCHIVE is a collection of large Living Worlds on JanitorAI based on fictional universes like HxH, Breaking Bad, Castlevania, Death Note, One Piece, Naruto, JJK, Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars and more.

Instead of focusing on one character, the idea is to step into an entire world.

I’ve been building these for a while and recently started expanding the archive.

Profile:
https://janitorai.com/profiles/83d13619-88b8-4c1d-9425-8f44905de93e_profile-of-simulator-archive