CHAI founder Will Beauchamp took to Reddit to announce that Persona v1 is nearly ready, with testing expected to start next week and a full rollout to all users within the next four weeks. The post got over 1,000 upvotes, but the comments tell a different story.
Out of hundreds of replies, the vast majority are not about Persona at all. Users want their chat history back.
Beauchamp acknowledged the backlash in the post, saying the team heard feedback about chat history and will work on increasing it.
He stopped short of promising a return to unlimited access, according to the Reddit post. “With so many users, we won’t be able to go back to unlimited, but we can figure out how to get you more,” he wrote.
As we covered last week, CHAI quietly limited visible chat history to 14 days as part of an experiment, with no in-app notice and no email warning. One Ultra subscriber in the thread said they pay $46.99 a month and described getting “something” in response as not good enough.
Users in the comments are clearly frustrated and only focused on their chats. Some users said they are canceling subscriptions. Others described losing year-long stories they had been building with bots.
One user noted their chats are disappearing after just three to four days, not the 14 days the company had cited. A few others said some older chats are slowly coming back, though not all of them.
The Persona feature itself does have fans. A handful of users expressed genuine excitement about it, with CHAI being an early social AI platform that launched in January 2021, before CharacterAI and before ChatGPT. Persona has been a long-requested feature, and at least on paper, it sounds like a meaningful update.
But without stable chat history, a lot of users are saying Persona does not mean much. As one commenter said, “without chat history to know what I’m replying to, what’s the point.”
Beauchamp said the team has grown recently and can now work on features they always wanted to build. He is asking users to share what they want to see next. Given how the comment section looks right now, the answer is pretty clear.
Dwayne Cubbins
2728 Posts
I cover fast-moving stories across apps, online platforms, and everyday tech — phones, wearables, consoles, and whatever else people are fighting with this week. Bugs, rollouts, scams, policy enforcement, and the occasional internet-culture rabbit hole are all fair game. My goal is simple — make confusing tech news readable. When I'm not working, I'm working out or chilling with my dog. Got a tip? You can find me on X @dcubbins.
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