As most anime fans would agree, there is something magical about Japanese and Asian media, particularly the anime genre. Unfortunately, the overall consensus for a non-anime watcher is to assume that this genre is for children solely because it is animated. However, this is not the case. While there are anime movies and series aimed at children specifically (for example, Pokémon), most films and series from this genre are aimed at an array of demographics, from prepubescent teens to adults.

So, the birth of Character.ai is not surprising. Actually, since the movie “Her” premiered eons ago at the 2013 New York Film Festival, I am surprised it took 10 years.

When Character.ai was launched, a company whose play was to put users in one-on-one conversations with customized, hyperrealistic chatbots, the founders and their engineering team worked overtime to come up with scads of use cases that they thought would appeal to end users. They spun up chatbots for travel planning, programming advice and language tutoring, but as is often the case, users had a different vision.

In the world of anime, a “waifus” is a favorite, often female but occasionally male, animated character which is idolized by participants as imagined perfect partners in the real world. Both Eren Yeager, the male character and Mikasa Ackerman, the female from the series Attack on Titan, made the top 10 list of favorite waifus. 

Charactere.ai has become a supernova within the fast-expanding universe of generative AI, the fanaticism of followers is a proof point, and inspired by the “incredible engagement” of its users, VC Andreessen Horowitz led a $150 million funding round in March, valuing it at $1 billion.

Almost immediately, the platform was overrun by an army of 14 million crowdsourced fantastical and sublime chatbots, crowding out the other characters (Elon Musk, Homer Simpson, Xi Jinping), that users enlist for role-playing, emotional support, companionship and even romantic love. “We’d see on Twitter somebody posting, ‘This videogame character is my new therapist. My therapist doesn’t care about me, and this cartoon does,’” CEO and founder Noam Shazeer said. “We just keep getting reminded that we have no idea what the users actually want.”

In less than 10 months, the service has captured 15 million registered users, and earned die-hard loyalty among its fans, many of whom now spend multiple hours a day immersed in endless dialogues with bots impersonating Tony Soprano, Joseph Stalin or Hunter x Hunter‘s Isaac Netero, who is one of the strongest martial artists in the anime universe and the guy who planted a bomb in his chest which is set to go off if he is ever defeated.

The platform’s popularity has convinced some in Silicon Valley that the future of always-on AI companions—a real-life version of the sci-fi movie “Her”—is near, if not already here.