🍪 Character.AI is blowing up

What’s good, friends. Happy Thursday. This is Bite Sized Beta. We make tech fun and easy to follow. Like that bouncing yellow ball during a sing-a-long movie.

If you’re too young to remember this, please move along...

Here’s what we’ve got on deck today:

  • 💬 Character.AI is blowing up

  • 🗳️ Poll of the week: are you paying for AI?

  • 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 6 bite-sized headlines

  • 📈 Report of the week: Gen-Z trends

  • 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds this week

  • 😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend

FRESHLY BAKED

CHARACTER.AI IS BLOWING UP

It’s almost the end of the week, and here are some things we’ve had enough of:

  • Work

  • AI chatbots

  • Flakers

  • AI chatbots

  • Our stock portfolio

  • Vegetables

  • AI chatbots

Oh ya, did we mention AI chatbots??

Bard, Claude, ChatGPT, My AI (Snapchat), Bing, we can’t take it anymore!!

But there’s one more that’s blowing up, so….

*pulls out out phone*

Sigh.

We try to stay away from telling you about every latest AI gimmick, but this trend might be sticking around.

Let’s get into it.

Character.AI is blowing up. It:

  • Was started by ex-Googlers that built the original language model behind Google's conversational AI products

  • Raised $150M from a16z at a 1B valuation

  • Got 1.7 million app installs in its first week

Sheeeesh.

So what is it exactly?

It’s an app where you can talk to AI as different characters.

Need advice from a therapist?

Character.AI’s got you.

Wanna have a philosophical debate with Seneca?

Character.AI’s got you.

Want Andrew Huberman’s help in coming up with a personalized nutrition plan?

Yup, Character.AI’s got you.

You can now even pull in multiple people into a group chat. Imagine having a convo with Einstein, Zeus, and Stephen Hawking.

Meta's been following in their footsteps by creating similar AI powered bots based on celebrities like MrBeast and Paris Hilton. You know you’ve got it good if Meta’s out copying you.

But what really caught our eye is that the monthly active users on their mobile apps are now catching up to ChatGPT in the US:

And they’ve also got the young folk:

This week, they introduced a $10/month subscription plan. For the fee, you get to skip waiting rooms, access to faster message generation, and access to an exclusive community channel for feedback and support.

It’s time for them to rake it in.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for this one… 👀

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

POLL OF THE WEEK: WOULD YOU PAY FOR AN AI CHATBOT?

Are people actually gonna pay to access an AI chatbot? What do you think - would you pay for one if it were cheap enough?

Sound off 👇🏽

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

THE BIG PIZOOKIE

REPORT OF THE WEEK

Tech companies care about a lot of things: the snacks in their micro-kitchens, nap pods, and no meeting days.

But you know what’s at the top of the list?

Teens.

The youth!!

Why?

Their behavior tends to predict long term trends. If you’re product’s losing heat with the teens, it’s a good signal that you’ve got trouble ahead.

The 46th (!) annual Gen Z study came out this week, which studied 10K US teens and their habits.

Check out what they found:

There you go friends - the recipe to be cool again, right in your hands.

Is Coach a thing again??

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED HEADLINES

Netflix is introducing Netflix House - physical locations that offer retail, dining, and live entertainment experiences using their catalog of movies/TV shows. Watch out Disney, they’re comin’ for ya.

John Legend is taking on Yelp with his first tech startup - a social app for personalized food and travel recommendations. They've already raised $5M from Lightspeed and other angels. Invite only, but sign up here.

Apple's dropping a cheaper version of its Vision Pro but.... it ain’t cheap? It's still gonna run us between $1.5-2.5K. It’ll also come with fewer cameras and no external display.

Spotify has introduced a new hub for artists' merch. They're not even taking a cut of the profits, most likely to stave off a revolt from musicians becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their streaming royalties.

The life expectancy for all American adults has been declining in recent years, but the gap between the college educated vs not is widening.Life expectancy for people without a Bachelor's degree was about 75, compared to 83 for those with degrees.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

 😂 

 

That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!

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