Character.AI Removed Popular Fandom Characters

The AI companion company Character.AI has just confirmed to multiple sources that they have removed a large number of characters from its platform, citing its adherence to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) and copyright law. However, it was not clear in the statment whether the deletions were proactive or in response to requests from the holders of the characters' intellectual property rights.

Futurism reported that Character.AI took to social media in droves recently to decry the deletion of chatbots based on characters from the beloved "Harry Potter" series. However, there are much more going on behind the scenes.

The investigation of Futurism, reveaked that other chatbots stemming from Warner Bros. Discovery-held film rights had disappeared, too: characters from the HBO hit "Game of Thrones," the DC Universe, and even "Looney Tunes" cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck have been vaporized from the platform.

Many of the removed AI bots once raked in thousands — and in some cases, millions — of user chats.

Futurism asked Character.AI about the Potterverse erasure, and whether Warner Bros. Discovery had requested the removal of AI chatbot characters based on copyrighted characters. However, the company didn't respond directly to the latter question, but confirmed in an emailed statement via a crisis PR firm that a "group of characters" was recently removed after they were deemed "violative" to copyright law or the company's policies:

"We conduct proactive detection and moderation of user-created Characters, including using industry-standard and custom blocklists that are regularly updated. We proactively, and in response to user reports, remove Characters that violate our Terms of Service. We also adhere to the DCMA requirements and take swift action to remove reported Characters that violate copyright law or our policies.

Users may notice that we’ve recently removed a group of Characters that have been flagged as violative and these will be added to our custom blocklists moving forward."

The removals have often been patchy. For example, though bots named "Sirius Black" — a fan-favorite "Harry Potter" character — have largely been removed, "Sirius Orion Black" appears to still be working. And though "Severus Snape" characters are mostly gone, bots with titles like "Husband Snape" and "Dad Snape" have so far been spared. Users have also found other workarounds, for instance referring to the titular character Harry Potter as simply "the boy who lived."

The AI-powered app Character.AI was launched in September 2022 by ex-Googlers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas. Both men had previously been a part of Google’s LaMDA project.

The userbase on Character.AI is largely rooted in fandom culture, and the promise that users can use the platform to communicate and develop relationships with immersive, AI-powered versions of their favorite fictional characters has always been part of the service's draw.

If Warner Bros. Discovery indeed requested the mass removal of its copyrighted characters, it could set a bad-for-business precedent for Character.AI, as other people or organizations holding fandom-heavy IPs could decide to follow suit.