All of the users who visit the site more than 280 million times a month (back in May) believe that Character.ai is a democratizing force for a technology that has long existed behind closed doors. They believe it will have a profound and beneficial effect on the world, giving everyone exactly the companion they need at the moment they need it.

Even the founders’ former employer is bullish. At Google’s annual developer conference in May, Alphabet’s cloud chief, Thomas Kurian, touted a new partnership with Character.AI under which the startup will use the search giant’s sophisticated computing hardware, including specialized chips for AI models. If Character.AI can build a viable business out of chatbots, that would provide a template for other consumer AI startups, not to mention entertainment and social media giants.

While at Google, the founders and other colleagues had invented the Transformer, a machine-learning model that represented a breakthrough in building larger models more efficiently (it’s the T in GPT). The result was LaMDA or Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

Google stopped short of releasing LaMDA as a stand-alone offering which caused the founders to leave and start Character.ai, to let their technology run wild.

Character.AI users have now sent more than 15 billion messages to their AI companions, and active users on average spend 2 hours on the platform per day.

You can either agree, relate or don’t, but the ability to talk one-on-one with a bot, where one party is unaware of the other’s existence, and whose responses are not under the control of the other party, creates a classic parasocial relationship that feels real. Parasocial relationships are most common with celebrities, organizations (such as sports teams) or television stars, and many psychologists believe that parasocial relationships may help a person overcome challenges, master new skills, or develop healthy habits.

The result is a powerful feedback loop that can lead some people to form intimate connections with their chosen bots. People have a strong need to belong, and to feel accepted and understood, and it is often hard to do that today, with real-world friends, acquaintances, or partners.

Having been massively oversubscribed with its seed round in spite of zero revenue and no plan, the pathway to revenue for Character.ai is likely through advertising sales, but the model will be tricky. Imagine, for instance, the reaction of a user enjoying an immersive chat with their new best therapist friend that gets interrupted by a YouTube-style advertisement mid-roll. Other models include partnering with entertainment companies to power characters in videogames, or selling access to its model to outside developers, as most all of the top AI startups are doing.