ai-companions
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Born wants your next friendship to start with a penguin
The makers of Pengu turned a virtual pet into a shared project for real friends. Now Born is testing how far that small idea can travel - into study habits, self-care and human-looking AI companions.
Eugenia Kuyda Is Betting That the Next Social Network Will Be Made of Apps
After teaching software to hold a conversation, the former journalist behind Replika wants everyone to make tiny apps. Her new wager is that software itself can become a social medium.
Character.AI Built a World of Talking Personas. Then the Model Race Cost More Than the Fantasy
The chatbot company found millions of people would spend an hour inside a made-up conversation. Then compute costs, a founder homecoming and a safety reckoning turned one clever app into a test of whether AI can become an entertainment medium.
Akash Nigam Bet on Avatars Before AI Learned to Speak
A failed chat app, a rejected exit and a stubborn interest in how people express themselves led Akash Nigam to spend nearly a decade building digital characters. Now Genies is trying to give artificial intelligence a face, a wardrobe and somewhere to play.
Genies Burned Through Three Internet Eras to Make AI Wear a Face
The Los Angeles startup began with animated news, found money in celebrity cartoons, rode the NFT wave, and emerged with a more practical bet: persistent, game-ready AI characters. The lesson is not to predict the next platform perfectly - it is to keep the expensive technical core while replacing the story around it.