Character AI temporarily brings back Soft Launch under a paywall, sparking backlash

Character AI brought back Soft Launch, but there’s a catch. You need to pay for the Character AI Plus (c.ai+) subscription, and even then, some Plus users report being unable to access the model. The subscription is $9.99 a month, and you get access to other models like “Deepsquak.”

Posts on Reddit have shared screenshots of the Soft Launch model in the menu, though it doesn’t seem to be live for everyone yet. Character AI typically rolls these updates out in batches, so it’ll take a while for it to reach everyone.

Additionally, this revival of the model is temporary. Even if you pay for the Plus subscription, the company didn’t issue an official statement on how long Soft Launch would still exist. The model supposedly runs on older infrastructure, and they’ve brought it back for now. Character AI is also planning to release an “updated version” of Soft Launch, with advanced memory. However, this might be paywalled as well once it arrives.

The rollout isn’t without issues, since many active (c.ai+) subscribers report that the model isn’t visible to them. Fortunately, one user in the comments suggested a workaround. You need to first select Soft Launch as the chat style on the Character AI website, and once you’ve selected it on the web, it’ll also switch to Soft Launch on the app. This is either a bug or part of the phased rollout.

As expected, reactions to this from users were largely negative. People say it “feels wrong,” or that it’s among the worst things they could’ve done.

The developers were called greedy, since nobody likes it when a company paywalls something that was previously free. Angry users earlier demanded to keep Soft Launch alive, but this is definitely not what they were expecting. Downloading an older version of the app doesn’t help because the models run on servers/cloud.

The company wouldn’t have gotten a lot of backlash if the new model, Pipsqueak 2, had been positively received. It looks like users don’t like that model at all, which is why they wanted the legacy models to be kept alive in the first place. Hopefully, things work out, and the company finds a balance between profits and user satisfaction.

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