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bobcoi · 10 months ago
code: https://github.com/bobcoi03/opencharacter

I built this because users where angry at c.ai for shutting down the old site and implementing more filters and censors.

So I rebuilt the old ui and used models on OpenRouter to power everything

Have nearly all the features, edit, regenerate, public/private characters, personas.

notavalleyman · 10 months ago
Is there any censorship in this space which you think is acceptable, or is all censorship inappropriate, in your opinion.

Obviously, the public gets no benefit when you censor some guy from doing his business in private.

But you're also in danger of providing sexualised child characters for people to jerk off to.

How do you square all of this, I'm interested in hearing how you approached this problem

paulluuk · 10 months ago
> Obviously, the public gets no benefit when you censor some guy from doing his business in private. > But you're also in danger of providing sexualised child characters for people to jerk off to.

I would say that anything is fine in private, even that. Better than them looking for the real thing, right? I guess some people are afraid that such content will actually turn people into pedo's, but I don't think that's true any more than watching gay porn will turn you gay.

bobcoi · 10 months ago
I think I'm taking the Twitter approach. As long as it is not illegal it's fine
swatcoder · 10 months ago
There's a reasonable philosophy where toolmakers don't involve themselves in fine, disputed, and frequently changing cultural differences.

It's one thing to build guardrails into tools where the impact is immediate and catastrophic, like a safety guard on saw, so that people don't permanently lose a finger to distraction or casual negligence.

It's a different thing -- to be reasonably argued both for and against -- to build guardrails against concerns that are abstract, indirect, cultural, political, etc

And you can tell that your example is more cultural than catastrophic because not everybody frets over what people do by themselves and in their own mind.

evoke4908 · 10 months ago
For public consumption, yeah I think it's reasonable to censor the most egregious stuff, but for private use there's really no point. If people want something, they will always find a way to get it. 100% of the time. There is absolutely no amount of censorship or even laws that can prevent it.

Censoring anything meant for private use seems like a pretty pointless exercise. It will either get un-censored, or users will find what they want elsewhere.

E: You also need to ask yourself: assuming that you can't simply suppress other people's desires for things you find objectionable (because you can't), would you rather they use fictional CP with fictional people, or the real deal with real children? Because the real thing very much exists and is quite available despite the laws and social stigma. If you make some vain attempt to prevent anyone from ever creating fictional CP, then what do you think those people will get next?

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mmaunder · 10 months ago
How is openrouter working out?
bobcoi · 10 months ago
really nice. Just one API you get access to 100+ models

If I want to change models I just change one line of code.

Pricing is pretty fair as well they just charge a % on top

sandwichsphinx · 10 months ago
great project, any plans to implement voice chat features?
trodal89 · 10 months ago
Requires a Google sign-in to chat, not ideal for such a sexualised service.
from-nibly · 10 months ago
Don't worry, once Google catches wind of "thing they don't like" they will kill the oauth connection.
makebelievelol · 10 months ago
Glad to see more people in this space, we are also working on something similar. Congrats on shipping!
random_upvoter · 10 months ago
The thing I like best about character.ai is their TTS. Does anyone have an idea what engine they use? I don't suppose they invented their own system from scratch.

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lordswork · 10 months ago
Character.ai does invent everything from scratch (for better and worse).
elevenoh4 · 10 months ago
seems you're using both open & closed source models

i just tried it out. solid, but doesn't seem as uncensored or capable as e.g. https://uncensored.com/ai

btw: do u know whether c.ai actually parses tone/emotion from voice (or just from the SpeechToText stream?

chancemehmu · 10 months ago
how do you plan to compete with Dippy AI? They have a similar thesis and a better design imo
wifipunk · 10 months ago
Why compare this to Dippy AI of all things? Looks like a platform/app targeting a different type of AI character consumer. Also I see nothing about Dippy being open source.
qsort · 10 months ago
Can we please not have the HN front page be weird porn?
pilotneko · 10 months ago
It was a bit surprising to click this link on my VPN. Wish it had a NSFW tag. Uncensored is a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to GenAI, half of the time is just means "no instruction tuning."
swatcoder · 10 months ago
The link should probably just be the GitHub repo. It's an interesting project and discussion topic (although maybe a little flamewar inviting), but it doesn't seem necessary to link to the product itself in this case.
nickthegreek · 10 months ago
For those downvoting, click the link. The HN url should have been https://github.com/bobcoi03/opencharacter

The URL submitted tells nothing about the project and immediately displays questionable images.