Character.ai, a Google-backed AI chatbot provider with tens of millions of monthly active users, announced on Friday that Meta’s previous business product, Karandeep Anand, has joined the CEO.
Previously, Anand, a board advisor at Charach.ai, has stepped into the CEO role at a pivotal moment for chatbot providers. Over the past few months, Charition.AI has added a number of new safety features in light of aggressive lawsuits. This claims that one of the company’s chatbots played a role in the death of a 14-year-old Florida boy.
Anand comes to Character.ai with experience running advertising products that have reached billions of users on Meta’s app. Previously, Anand served as head of product management at Microsoft and oversees the user experience on the company’s cloud platform, Azure. Most recently, Anand served as president of Fintech startup Brex.
Anand has taken over more than 10 months after Google hired Noam Shazeer, the startup co-founder and CEO, at Mountain View Giant, to Google. At the time, Google also signed a non-exclusive agreement to use Chacel.ai technology.
The Charition.AI deal with Google has prompted federal regulators to investigate the relationships between companies regarding antitrust concerns. This is one of many reverse-up fin deals in the regulatory scrutiny AI startup space, along with a contract with Microsoft’s feffclection.ai.
Charition.ai raises more than $150 million in venture capital, primarily from Andreessen Horowitz.
In a blog post, Anand said one of his top priorities is to make the safety filter “not too overwhelming.” The new CEO said that while the company is deeply concerned about user safety, it is far too often that “apps filter out completely harmless things.”
Anand also said it plans to improve the quality of AI models on Character.AI’s platform, innovate around memory capabilities, and increase transparency around decision-making. He says many of these features will be coming in the next 60 days.
Designed purely for entertainment, chatbots specialize in characters and have grown into a large market for generating AI. This is an amazing trend for many people. According to Sensor Tower data, in 2024, 66% of the company’s users were 18-24 years old, and 72% were women.
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