Neural language model chatbot web application Character.ai has secured additional funding of more than $200 million, led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
This latest investment, which ranges between $200 – $250 million, will take the company’s estimated valuation to $1 billion. Character.ai uses large language models to generate conversations in the style of various people and characters. These include Iron Man himself, Tony Stark and even real-life personalities like Elon Musk.
The company was founded by Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who previously worked on building Google’s conversational model LaMDA. Character.ai launched its beta model in September last year and has since gone on to capture the imagination with its AI capabilities.
AI investments
This latest investment marks internet pioneer Marc Andreessen’s first leap into the quickly evolving AI industry. Tools such as ChatGPT have sparked massive interest in the AI sector, with investors keen to be part of the next big thing. Names such as Microsoft are well on their way with AI implementation across its ecosystem, while Google is currently working on its own chatbot Bard.
However, while artificial intelligence may show considerable promise for the future, some worry about how lucrative an investment these services are. Some venture capital firms are expressing caution about being swept up in the AI race and that they should consider that machine learning systems require large amounts of data and computing power to operate, not to mention that much of the technology is still in the early stages of development.
While some may still be wary of AI, others are looking toward the future and how these tools could change how we work and create. Production studio Corridor Digital recently utilised AI tools to create a short anime, which traditionally would require the work of someone with animation expertise. We are even starting to see educational bodies adapt to the prospects of AI dominating our spaces by embracing them now and allowing students to utilise tools such as ChatGPT in their written work.
Paige Cook is a writer with a multi-media background. She has experience covering video games and technology and also has freelance experience in video editing, graphic design, and photography. Paige is a massive fan of the movie industry and loves a good TV show, if she is not watching something interesting then she's probably playing video games or buried in a good book. Her latest addiction is virtual photography and currently spends far too much time taking pretty pictures in games rather than actually finishing them.
