Hi, this is Alston Anthony, the Software Advisor. In this video, we are going to look into a free AI software that will help you solve one of the biggest problems for marketers, founders, and business people: getting rid of fear when talking to your potential customers or people you want to connect with.
Introduction to Character.AI
In this video, we are going to take a deep dive into an AI software which is completely free. It has a plus option, but you don’t need it. It is called Character.AI.
This is the Character.AI homepage. If I quickly read their definition, it allows you to chat with AI characters anytime, anywhere from desktop or mobile app. It’s available on Android as well as iOS. These are super intelligent chatbots that hear you, understand you, and remember you. Free to use with no ads—cool, right?
As I mentioned, not only can you chat, you can actually talk to them. This is Character.AI, and now let me introduce you to how you can start using it for this specific use case.
Getting Started with Character.AI
Creating Your Free Account
Once you create a free account—I have created my free account and there is nothing complex involved at all—you just create a free account. You can do it on web as well as in the mobile app. Search for Character.AI on any app store or Play Store and you will find it.
Once you’ve created it, you’ll come to this kind of page where they have various chatbots. Remember, this is not just one use case. This software in general is really huge, and a lot of people use it for various sorts of purposes and use cases, from role-playing to getting inspiration and even some crazy adventure stories. Depending on your need, you might be trying out different ways as well.
Understanding the Platform
In this use case for business people or professionals, how can we go about it? Basically, it has all different personas or chatbots. When a chatbot is created, it gives a certain persona for that particular chatbot.
It gives you characteristics, it gives you goals. Basically, you can ideally create your own customer within this chatbot and you can talk with them. Or you can even find characters within the search and explore section.
How to Chat and Talk to AI Characters
If you’re not knowing where to get started, maybe checking on some of these things will give you some ideas. Just search here—for example, I’m in the software space. If I’m trying to sell software to business owners, I went here and tried to find some business owners which I can talk to and experience their insights on how potential business owners will talk to me.
You can see when I search for “business owner,” there are so many different chatbots here. For example, there are so many different chatbots created based on business owners. You can see businessman, work-life, there’s even a chef. When I’m talking to them, I’m going to get responses based on how this chatbot has been categorized.
The Power of Voice Interaction
The cool thing here is not just chatting. For example, when I type something, it is going to be giving you not just answers but creating that scenario for you. It tells you what the character is currently doing and just gives you an idea of what they’re doing. When you click on this icon, it is going to play that sound also, not just type it. So you can have a virtual conversation.
But if it still feels weird—like you type something and you are hearing the answer with the audio—we can go another step forward and click on something along the lines of this call button here. What it automatically does is it automatically creates a version where it is a phone call with this person. Even when I’m trying to talk, it is probably recording that also, and based on what I’m speaking, it will talk to you as a real person.
Now you sort of understand the power behind it. The cool thing is not only can you use the already created models, you can create your own models also.
Example 1: CEO Practice
I have tried out all the different ones. This is the initial chatbot which I tried out—nothing special, just a basic librarian, trying to talk to a librarian person. We also have characteristic-based personas as AI chatbots.
For example, I’m just scrolling here—I won’t be able to show everything—but it gives personalization. For example, this is a billionaire CEO. He is rich, psychopathic. How would you dare to talk to him? So I was starting with chat, and you can see I tried to promote software reviews to this guy. It almost went out like a scene.
In the end, I kept on trying different stuff, and there was a point where I kept on engaging him in all the different ways, and he started to give me ideas based on his perspective. For example, you can see I asked what those things were, and you can see his responses are crazy.
I started asking different sorts of questions like talking to a real person, and he started giving me some ideas on what kind of YouTube videos he might do. You can see react series to memes and traveling videos, and I just kept on asking more. He gave me ice bucket challenge, car racing, and you can just keep on going.
I even asked his advice on what should I do, and he started giving me the answers but in his personality. So it’s really cool to get the personality behind it.
Progressive Learning Approach
If you’re just getting started, start with typing. Then when you move on to go to the next step, take the call option. When you call and talk, it almost feels like you are talking to a real person. I tried Elon Musk—you can see all the possibilities. I also tried getting ideas, brainstorming ideas, all those options.
Example 2: Small Business Owner Practice
I tried creating my own bot here. This is a small business owner from a particular small town. I tried talking to him. For example, when I started the chat, it almost works out like a scene, and I asked what his challenges were with digital marketing.
Obviously, I’m a technical person, I’m a digital marketing person, I know what digital marketing is. But this particular persona does not know what even digital marketing is. It doesn’t even know that it’s two words.
It’s asking, “What’s digital marketing?” So you can see we can sort of think from their shoes. If I’m going to go to a small town small business owner and directly start to use words like digital marketing, I can’t expect everyone to know that particular word.
Realistic Rejection and Objection Handling
You can see I keep on trying to talk, and he’s stubborn. He will use his personal experience. Even when I try to talk—this is almost like a sales speech—I’m going into this person’s life and I’m trying to sell it, promote your business so you can get new leads, new customers. What is his answer going to be? I’m getting realistic answers here. You can see all the things, and he’s giving me his problems and why he didn’t get it. So you can see it’s just like talking to a real person.
In my life, if this is a real person, I will talk to him like that. Not everything is approving. For example, I started asking all these things, and if I start to sell something—for example, digital marketing services—I get direct rejection.
I started to pitch him about a Google Maps listing option, and I mentioned it as fifty dollars. He said, “How would that—fifty dollars? You must be joking. That’s expensive!” When you’re listening to something like this in your ear, suddenly you can start getting rid of that fear because you can experiment with these AI chats.
Overcoming Objections
I’m starting with a reply like, “It’s a one-time payment to set up, full setup, brings customers for a lifetime.” He starts going, “I’m not sure about paying something. What would make it suitable for me?” He wants it free, of course.
Now I’m trying to go a further step—how I can make him a customer. This almost comes into a position where, when I give this line like, “Well, what if I have proof of how well it worked from other small businesses in your city?” it started moving from direct rejection of my offer onto a potential consideration.
This is how you perfect your fear of speaking. When you start a chat here, you type and you listen as a real person. You just consider them as a real person. Even if you are not wanting to just type, go into a call with this person. You can work it from your phone, and when you do something like that, they will try to answer it. Once they’ve answered, that information also will be available here.
Create Your Own AI Character Chatbot
I told you about the built-in characters, but what if I told you that you can go ahead and create your own characters also?
Step-by-Step Character Creation
For example, when you come down here, you can create a character. When you do that, you can give the name. I have a ChatGPT prompt here. For example, this is a prompt I will leave in the video description.
You can ask the chatbot to create it, and here you insert your target audience and their characteristics. Give this particular thing, so it will create a good tagline, description, greetings. Then you can go and read through it and modify all the things you want.
The main power comes when you can add your own voices. You can upload your own voice here, create your own voice and reply, or discover other voices here. When you click on more options, you can keep it private or public.
Defining Character Personality
The definition is something very important. Basically, here is where you build out this chatbot—the characteristics of it, how to personalize it, all these things. I have given two different definition prompts here also. One I asked directly with giving official documentation, and it brought me a really good definition which I can fine-tune. Then when I have that definition, just copy all these things and paste it here and just click on create character. That is how I created this particular character, Sarah, and she will automatically talk to me. When I ask all the questions, she will reply in that particular way.
Adding Depth to Personality
But I went one step further also. For example, I created a good character here, but just see the differences. I have finished this prompt with just this as it is, nothing much deeper. But when I created another prompt, I created this particular line here. You can create this line for your character also: “She’s very skeptical about scamming or new products. Anyone has to win her trust.”
When I do that, I’m adding extra personality to my audience. When I do that, it automatically makes me need to focus on these things when I’m talking with them.
Comparing Different Personalities
When I did that, I created Sarah 1. You can see that I said the same things for both of them: “I have something to sell you.” For the first person, it’s directly starting with “Good!” and you can see the differences in reply. This person is very open to the idea. But when I say this to the other one: “Who are you? What are you selling?” You can see the direct two differences depending on the personality.
I say it’s a new course to get rich in ten days. The first person obviously is very interested, very open. But when I do that with the skeptical one, she raises an eyebrow: “A course to get rich in ten days? That sounds too good to be true. What exactly do you teach?” You can see the personality is differing, how the conversation is going forward.
When I try to give a price, you can see the different responses here. One is asking direct details, but this person says, “One thousand dollars for a course that promises income in two months? That sounds pricey. What makes the investment worth it?” It’s a brand new limited offer, and you can see just by going through the replies itself, you can see how different personalities respond.
Conclusion
My Recommendation
How would I recommend you do this? Create a brand new customer profile for your audience. Give the definition and use this ChatGPT prompt. Give all the different major types of characteristics you might have faced already, how you know people in your industry tend to say things. When you do that and when you train yourself with these chatbot models with this personalization, generally you will find you tend to get better at it. You will get fluent. When you get rejection, you know what to say next because you have been training with all the different personas and everything.
Final Thoughts
That is my explanation of Character.AI. You can find all the different ways of finding AI chats. At the same time, you can create them, and you have a very interesting use case to get rid of all those fears and get much more flexible and talk fluently with your customers.
If you have any other creative ideas for this tool also, do let me know in the comments. If you found this video useful, like and subscribe for more videos like this. Once again, thank you so much for watching. Have a great day!