Character.AI unveils AvatarFX, an AI video model to create lifelike chatbots

Character.AI, a leading platform for chatting and roleplaying with AI-generated characters, unveiled its forthcoming video generation model, AvatarFX, on Tuesday. Available in closed beta, the model animates the platform’s characters in a variety of styles and voices, from human-like characters to 2D animal cartoons. AvatarFX distinguishes itself from competitors like OpenAI’s Sora because it isn’t solely a text-to-video generator. Users can also generate videos from preexisting images, allowing users to animate photos of real people. It’s immediately evident how this kind of tech could be leveraged for abuse — users could upload photos of celebrities or people they know in real life and create realistic-looking videos in which they do or say something incriminating. The technology to create convincing deepfakes already exists, but incorporating it into popular consumer products like Character.AI only exacerbates the potential for it to be used irresponsibly. We’ve reached out to Ch ... Read full article.