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.
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.
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.