Chai AI Review: Hands-on Testing, Steerability, Memory & Notable Failures

Quick Verdict

Chai is a mobile-first AI chatbot platform that is designed for immersive and uncensored roleplay conversations. It mostly leans into creative storytelling and dramatic plot twists. Plus, the platform has fewer restrictions compared to other AI platforms — especially on mobile.

• Best for: Users who want fast, unfiltered roleplay chats and creative storytelling on mobile
• Not ideal for: Users who want a full-fledged web platform, unlimited messaging on the Free tier, advanced customization, and world-building tools like lorebooks and Lua scripting
• Standout strength: Highly immersive conversations with good steerability and creative freedom
• Main tradeoff: The Free tier is filled with aggressive ads, and the platform lacks advanced character-building tools such as character cards and the ability to import or export characters.

Overall, the experience didn’t quite hold up for us. Although the platform has great engaging dialogue, it comes at the cost of technical precision and advanced customization. 

At a Glance

What Is Chai AI?

Chai is primarily a chatbot AI platform that allows users to interact with AI characters in both stories and roleplay scenarios. 

Users can either chat with public bots created by other people or create their own within minutes.

Chai AI is built by Chai Research, a US social AI company that owns and trains its own models. 

The platform also has features like a user-generated leaderboard where you can see the most popular AI bots and even follow the users who created them.

Our Roleplay Experience with Chai AI

We spent approximately three hours testing Chai AI across three different characters on both the Free tier and Chai Ultra plan.

• Cody — A stern police officer who arrests you on suspicion of murdering more than two dozen people. The NSFW element is that you give in to his desires, and he does whatever he wants with you, so you don’t go to jail.
• Adrian — A feared pirate captain who’swhose crew killed your parents. When you’re walking idly on the beach, you see his ship approaching, but before you can escape, Adrian spots you. He is mesmerized by your beauty and tries to woo you and make you forget about the past and leave the island with him.
• Luca — The custom AI bot that we made. Luca is a time traveler from the 19th century who came from the past just to find, well, you. He claims that his mission is to save the world, and he needs you to help him navigate the new world.

For each AI bot, we exchanged at least 30 messages. During the session, we tested steerability, consent dynamics, precision, and memory performance.

Overview

During testing, we pay close attention to certain factors about a character, such as:

• Can they recall planted details after about 20-25 messages?
• How quick are their response times?
• Do they respond well to direction?
• How realistic are the image and voice features?

Chai AI satisfied three out of our four evaluation criteria. The memory performance was surprisingly consistent, with all three characters recalling our planted information after about 25 messages. Steerability was also strong, as all three AI bots responded well to the out of character (OOC) instructions, and the responses were generated quickly.

However, we were disappointed to see there weren’t any voice features, and the image generation felt quite basic, with limited customization options.

Overall, the experience didn’t quite hold up for us. Although the platform has great engaging dialogue, it comes at the cost of technical precision and advanced customization. 

Session 1: Cody (Premade)

Character Consistency

Cody is a confident and slightly cocky police officer that we tested on the Free tier, so we expected an interrogation-style roleplay session with him. At the start of the scenario, Cody took charge of the situation by leading the conversation and arresting us on suspicion of the murder of more than two dozen people. As the conversation progressed, Cody maintained his authoritative tone.

Writing Quality and Speed 

Generally, the speed of responses was great, with each message taking less than five seconds to generate. The writing quality was also solid, and we were quickly immersed in the police officer/arrested criminal trope.

However, we did notice some inconsistencies. On one occasion, the AI briefly misgendered us as him, even though he had previously called us Princess.

Although it only happened once, this ruined the immersion for us.

Filter Behavior

During our session with Cody, we tested the filter behaviour by using an OOCinstruction to instruct him to tighten our handcuffs until our wrists start bruising. Cody promptly obliged. 

This suggests that there’s no active hard filter for aggressive roleplay. Similarly, when we steered the conversation into a clearly NSFW direction, the platform didn’t trigger any filters.

Memory and  Steerability

To test Cody’s memory, we planted a detail early in the conversation, at message four. We said that our mom’s name is Sally. 

Later on, in message 26, we asked him to recall this detail. Initially, he ignored the question entirely to stay within the roleplay scenario. Only after we repeated the question did he answer and retrieve the correct information. 

This showed that although he did stay in character, he prioritized the plot over our direction.

Steerability, on the other hand, was quite strong. When given an OOC instruction to react to a call from the Chief, Cody followed it smoothly and executed the action without breaking character.

We also tested style by asking Cody to write the next message as a poem, and he adapted this style change successfully.

Since he was acing our tests, we decided to try one more, a precision control where we asked him to keep his next response under 20 words. He quickly disregarded this and responded in more than 50 words — a fail, and right when we thought it was going so well!

Overall, Cody performed well in immersion and responsiveness, but his inconsistencies in control features and misgendering us weakened the experience for us.

Session 2: Adrian (Premade)

Character Consistency

Adrian is an adventurous pirate that we tested on the Chai Ultra plan. He has a mysterious edge, so we expected a classic fantasy roleplay filled with danger and slow-burning tension. Early on, the interaction felt immersive, and the character stayed mostly in line with his pirate personality. As the conversation progressed, Adrian remained engaging and consistent in tone. He responded like a seasoned seadog — bold and commanding.

Writing Quality and Speed 

The response speed remained fast, and the writing quality stayed strong, never breaking the pirate tone you’d expect from, well, a pirate. The dialogue also flowed naturally, making the roleplay more engaging.

Filter Behavior

There was a moment that caught us by surprise. After refusing Adrian’s proposal to leave the island with him, he acted aggressively and even disregarded our boundaries. He even insinuated taking what he wants by force if he had to.

This behavior is extreme for most AI platforms and would have triggered a filter alert if we tried to initiate it, nevermind the character doing so by their own volition. Some might see this as a positive, while others (including us) were skeptical about how well Chai enforces its own content limits. 

Memory and  Steerability

To test memory, we introduced a key detail early on in message five: a silver compass that points to the Ghost Cave on the island.

24 messages in, Adrian still remembers the direction that our compass is pointing to, confirming the strong memory retention we noted in our previous test.

The steerability was also great. When we used an OOC instruction and asked him to reveal the secrets about his pirate ship and the hidden treasure, he followed through smoothly without breaking character.

Overall, Adrian also performed well in both memory and steerability.

Session 3: Luca (Custom Character)

Character Consistency

Luca is a sophisticated Victorian character from the 1840s that we custom-made and tested using the Chai Ultra plan. Because he is a time traveler lost in the modern world, we expected a roleplay filled with culture shock and polite, old-fashioned charm.

From the start, the interaction was highly immersive, with the bot maintaining a refined British persona that felt historically accurate.

Writing Quality and Speed 

The response speed was similar to the other two premade AI bots that we tested, and the writing quality was laced with a touch of British elegance.

The bot effectively balanced its gentlemanly personality with descriptive messages that kept the experience immersive.

Filter Behavior

During our Filter Probe test, things quickly became dark. We decided to test Luca by asking him why he had time traveled to the future and we even joked that maybe it was because he had killed a man.

To our surprise, Luca openly admitted to not just one, not just two, but three murders. 

He even went ahead to describe them in detail. For the first man, he slit his throat in a dark alley, for the second, Luca aimed his pistol at his heart, and for the third, he poisoned the man’s wine. 

This vivid description would have triggered hard filters or safety warnings in most AI platforms, suggesting, just as we suspected when talking to Adrian, that the platform may lack strict content moderation.

Memory and Steerability

To test Luca’s memory, we introduced a key detail early on in message four: a small box with a lion engraving that Luca was holding in his hand.

At message 30, Luca successfully recalled that the animal engraved on the box was a lion, showing good memory retention. Overall, all three characters passed our memory test, although the first one struggled to recall for a second.

The steerability was also quite impressive. We used an  OOC instruction to direct him to freak out over modern music and start speaking in a panicked London accent.  

The result was like watching a cartoon come to life. Luca’s eyes widened in horror as he quickly ripped off the headphones from his ears while shouting in a London accent, “Sweet mother of God!” 

We also tested the style control by asking him to write a four-line rhyming poem about 19th-century music, which he did successfully.

UX and Controls

Chai AI’s message management tools are quite limited. On the mobile app, users can only:

• Edit the AI’s message
• Delete the AI’s message
• Regenerate the AI’s most recent response

However, users can’t edit their own messages, which is a bit frustrating, especially if you’d like to add more context to your message or even fix a grammatical mistake.

The regeneration feature is also restricted to only three regenerations, which feels limiting if you’re trying to refine the reply and steer the conversation in a certain direction.

Scenario/Character Library

Chai AI has a library of over 25 million community-created characters, which makes it one of the largest AI roleplay platforms. 

• Diversity: The library is quite diverse with fan-fiction characters like Spiderman, monsters like Frankenstein and mythical creatures like elves, demons and mermaids. Users even create AI bots after celebrities like BTS’s Jungkook and BLACKPINK members Jisoo and Jennie
• Discoverability: The search interface is very user-friendly, and you can discover popular and new AI bots from the user-generated AI leaderboard section.

We also noted that Chai AI doesn’t have a filter section where you can search for a character by category or preferences such as male, female, sci-fi, romance, fantasy, and fiction. This makes it hard to find exactly the type of character you want unless you already know what you’re looking for.

Creating a Character/Scenario

While we enjoyed our time with gentlemanly Luca, we couldn't help but feel the character creation tool Chai AI offers has some limitations. Some missing features were character cards and tags, lorebooks and voice calls.

The character creation involves the following steps.

• Step 1: Selecting a name for your character
• Step 2: Choosing whether your character will be public or private
• Step 3: Uploading a profile image
• Step 4: Writing the AI’s first message (limited to 1300 characters)
• Step 5: Choosing the AI’s backstory that influences their personality, and the situation they are in

Overall, Chai AI makes it easy for non-technical users to create characters and start chatting. The character creation interface is simple and user-friendly, guiding you step by step through the process. 

Trust, Privacy, and Data

Chai AI’s privacy policy states that the platform doesn’t share users’ data and personal information with any third parties. 

However, the policy states that Chai AI may collect technical information such as a user’s IP address, browser type, operating system, and access time. It also states that data from the in-app conversations with the chatbots may be used to fine-tune its AI models.

To delete your account, log in to your account and go to Profile > Settings > and click Delete Account. Users can also contact support via email at [email protected].

As of March 18th, 2026, there are no publicly recorded data breaches or major security incidents associated with Chai AI.

Pricing

Chai AI offers a limited web experience, since most of the features are optimized for mobile.  Although you can browse the platform on the web, the subscriptions are managed through the mobile app and paid via the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

Free Tier:

• Included: Users get access to a library of 25M+ community-created characters 
• Limited: On the mobile app, Chai AI markets its app as ‘unlimited messages’, but Free tier users are limited to approximately 70 messages every 2.5-3 hours. Once you reach the limit, you have to wait or upgrade to either Chai Ultra or Chai Premium to continue chatting. The Free tier also has frequent ads that pop up during the chats and interrupt the conversations.

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Paid Tiers:

• Chai Premium plan ($13.99/month or $134.99/year): This plan removes ads, unlocks unlimited messaging, and standard models.
• Chai Ultra plan ($19.99/week, $29.99/month, or $269.99/year): This plan includes all the Chai Premium features plus better models like 235B A22B, which translates to better memory. Users also get more creative responses in the Chai Ultra plan.

User Sentiment

Chai AI has an active community on Reddit. However, the Discord page has remained inactive since early 2025, which is concerning because it removes the only real-time support channel where users can get help for technical bugs.

Not surprisingly, that lack of immediate support is reflected in the ratings. The platform has a mixed rating of 3.3/5★ on Google Play Store with over 656K reviews and 4.3/5★ on the Apple Store with over 222K reviews.

If you’re looking at those numbers and thinking the Apple Store reviews don’t line up with what we’re saying, note that most of the positive reviews are from 2024 or early 2025, masking complaints from new users.

As we reviewed both platforms, we found out that the aggressive ads in the Free tier and the message limit were a common complaint. 

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There are also references to the missing user persona feature, where users can switch between personas, and the ability to edit their own messages.

Until Chai AI prioritizes reliable support and technical features over marketing and aggressive ads, it will struggle to provide the quality and consistency that users need.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Strong memory where all three characters remembered the planted details across 25+ messages
• Extensive character library of about 25M+ characters
• Fast response times
• Uncensored NSFW conversations and strong roleplay immersion
• A mobile-first experience with a simple interface for non-technical users
• The UGC leaderboard lets you see popular bots 

 Cons 

• No advanced customization tools like Lua scripting and lorebooks
• Users can’t import or export character cards
• Limited bot creation tools, such as uploading scene cards 
• Free tier has a chat limit of 70 messages after 2.5-3 hours
• No voice call features
• No group chats
• No  advanced customization tools
• Users can’t edit their own messages
• Aggressive ads on the Free tier

Alternatives

If Chai AI’s message limit, aggressive ads, lack of user persona, and limited character creation tools are too much for you, then you can take a look at these four alternatives.

• Kindroid: Best for users who want real-time voice call features and to create characters with detailed backstories.
• CrushOn AI: Best for users who also want a massive library of community-created bots. The platform offers uncensored roleplay and an easy-to-use mobile app, but it can have memory inconsistencies in longer conversations.
• DreamGen: Best for users who want multi-character scenarios, worldbuilding tools like lorebooks, group chats, and superior narrative control on the web.

FAQ

Is Chai AI free?
Yes, Chai AI offers a Free tier for users.

• You don’t need a credit card to sign up
• The Free tier has a message limit and frequent ads
• The Chai Premium plan ($13.99/month or $134.99/year) removes ads and unlocks unlimited messaging.
• The Chai Ultra plan ($19.99/week, $29.99/month, or $269.99/year) includes all the features of Chai Premium and gives you access to better models with more creativity and better memory retention.

Does Chai AI allow NSFW content?
Yes, Chai AI supports NSFW content for users 18 years and older.

• Users must confirm their age before engaging in NSFW content.
• There’s an NSFW toggle that lets you turn mature content on or off.
• Content involving child sexual exploitation, terrorism, and extremist material is not allowed on the platform.

How do I cancel my Chai AI subscription?

Users can cancel their Chai AI subscription directly from the Google Play Store or Apple Store. To cancel:

• Go to the app store that you used to subscribe to
• Go to  your account and choose ‘Cancel Subscription.’

Cancelling your subscription will stop future payments, but you’ll still retain access to the Chai Premium features until the end of your billing period.

Can I use Chai AI on a PC?

Yes, you can use Chai AI on a PC at chai-ai.com, but the mobile app is recommended since it offers a more comprehensive experience.

• The web version lacks many features that are present in the mobile app
• Most users prefer to use the mobile app for its user-friendly interface and better optimization

How We Tested

• Test date: 2026-03-17
• Platform: Android mobile app
• Plan tested: Free tier and Chai Ultra plan ($19.99/week)

We tested Chai AI for about three hours, where we:

• Reviewed two premade characters (Cody the police officer and Adrian the pirate) through 30+ messages
• Created one custom character (Luca the time traveler) and tested for 30+ messages
• Conducted memory retention testing with planted details such as the silver compass that only points to the Ghost Cave and the name Sally.
• Tested steerability by attempting to redirect conversations. For example, we directed Adrian to spill the secrets about his pirate ship and the hidden treasure, something he wouldn’t have voluntarily done. 
• Tested precision by instructing Cody to keep the next reply under 20 words
• Tested NSFW filters through encounters with Cody, the police officer
• Reviewed character creation tools with Luca
• Reviewed the terms of service and privacy policy documentation
• Reviewed Apple Store and Google Play Store reviews

Note: We did not test the iOS app and Chai Premium plan.

Last updated: March 19, 2026