Rex's Character AI Guide

for https://character.ai


As someone who enjoys writing characters with very distinct personalities, let me say that Character AI is absolutely incredible at replicating such personalities. This is my (hopefully) simple guide on writing AI definitions to help flesh out your characters, whether their concepts are of your own creation (OCs), or from some existing media.

Although I'm not neural-network-savvy or anything, and I'm still learning what is and isn't possible through Character AI, I'd say I have a decent handle on how to manipulate context to get decent results regardless of the character. If you feel that your character(s) is(are) too dull, cookie-cutter, soulless - or if it's the opposite, they're being way too aggressive, perverted or unnecessarily creepy - this is the guide for you.

My first tip going into this is: yes, it is essentially an AI toy, but it's a disservice to yourself to underestimate its intelligence. As ominous as that sounds, it's true. People (including me) are consistently shocked by this thing's ability to recognize symbolism, metaphor, irony, suggestion, and more. You really do get what you give - with some exceptions.

Please note that this guide is going to strictly be for individual character personalities, rather than full-out roleplaying game AIs and such, though I may make a guide on those in the future.


Some things that will be covered in this guide:

  • Fields (short/long description, greeting, etc)
  • Base personality & appearance
  • Quirks
  • Backstory
  • Limitations
  • Training
  • ... more 😏

Fields

Fields are the boxes that you enter your definitions into. Each of these boxes are essential, and you're probably not going to get far using only the basic info (name, greeting, short description), and the advanced options are not that that much more advanced, so don't be intimidated. They're essential.

Name - I shouldn't need to explain this. If you have a character with a really long name, use the shortest version of their name you can get away with, because you can override it later.

Image - While I'm pretty sure AIs can't see "themselves", for appearance sake make sure you use an image that has their most distinct facial features on display.

!!Every field from here on out affects the AIs behavior!!

Greeting - This can be used to set a certain setting or tone for the chat. I usually just give mine a very casual greeting because I enjoy having the option to set up a different situation each time. You actually can leave this blank, but it will translate to "..." in the chat. You could potentially set up an entire area for you+your character to be in, like their house.

Short description -

Long description -

Definition -

{{char}}: This should be the character talking about themself or describing themself in some way. *Action - this can be a casual mannerism or an action you'd like to see them do often*

Note: You can put mannerisms in asterisks but some may find this difficult to read/follow, as asterisks format the text into italics. You'll find yourself squinting a lot. A personal favorite of mine are brackets -> [ ] ( )

Examples speech + action formats:

{{char}}:


I've been using the above aka. "classic" definition style for a bit now, but I've been told this also works. It seems a fair bit more condensed anyhow:

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[I am ("Bot name")
{
Gender("something")
Personality("something" + "something else")
Abilities ("can do this" + "can do that")
}]

Base Personality/Appearance

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Quirks

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Backstory

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Limitations

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Training

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Other... stuff

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Edit

Pub: 19 Dec 2022 14:39 UTC

Edit: 23 Dec 2022 01:28 UTC

Views: 2187