In other news, TikTok is preparing to challenge Amazon's Prime Day event in July with its own "Deals For You Days" sales event. Reliance Jio, India's largest telecom operator, has initiated a tariff increase expected to impact the entire industry. SoftBank has formed a joint venture with Chicago-based health tech company Tempus in Japan. Google is reportedly developing its own customized chatbot platform to compete with Meta and Character.AI. Other startups mentioned in the article include Illumex, Directo, Axelera, Orby AI, PortSwigger, Odaseva, Ironspring Ventures, Bluesky, Dust, Synthflow, Persona, Udio, Suno, Whee, and Onehouse.
Key takeaways:
- Character.AI has launched a new feature that allows users to converse with AI characters over calls, supporting multiple languages and offering a seamless switch between calling and texting.
- The company has also launched Character Voices, a feature that enables users to create their own voices, with over 1 million voices currently in the app’s library.
- Despite some users on Reddit complaining about their characters’ changing personalities, Character.AI maintains that no major changes have been made, suggesting that perceived differences may be due to user participation in tests.
- Character.AI's new features come as Google is reportedly developing its own customized chatbot platform to compete with Meta and Character.AI.