If you’ve spent any time on r/CharacterAI lately, you already know the mood. It’s not good.
What used to be the go-to platform for chatting with fictional characters has turned into something that actively fights its own users. Filters that block romance mid-scene. Characters that forget your name after three messages. Bots you spent hours crafting, vanishing overnight because an automated sweep decided they looked too much like someone’s IP. The February 2026 “Moderatedpocalypse” wiped out entire fandom ecosystems in hours. Original characters — not Marvel, not Disney, just someone’s personal creation — getting caught in the blast radius alongside the copyright stuff.
And if you’re under 18, you’re now in a completely separate product tier that barely resembles what the platform used to be.
For romance and fantasy readers, the frustration is even sharper. These are people who came to C.ai because they wanted to talk to their book boyfriend. They wanted an enemies-to-lovers arc, a slow burn, a bit of tension. You know — the stuff that makes romance novels sell millions of copies a year. Apparently that’s fine in a paperback but not in a chatbot.
The filters don’t just block explicit content. They block emotional intimacy. A character can’t hold your hand without the system getting nervous. Try writing any kind of conflict scene — an argument, a confrontation, a character expressing real anger — and watch the AI suddenly go flat and start speaking like a customer service bot. “I understand your frustration. Let’s take a moment to reflect on our feelings.” Nobody asked for therapy. They asked for a story.
Then there’s the memory problem. C.ai characters forget things constantly. You build a relationship over dozens of messages, establish backstory, create shared history — and then the character just… doesn’t remember any of it. It’s like dating someone with amnesia. Except you’re also paying for the privilege.
And now there are ads. Firing before you can even read a greeting message.
So where is everyone going?
The technical crowd moved to SillyTavern, an open-source app for, in their own words, technical “power users”. If you’re not comfortable with command lines, YAML configs, juggling extensions and versions, and deep model configurations, or what “KoboldAI” means, you’re already using it. If you don’t, it’s probably not for you.
The mobile crowd scattered across Chai, CrushOn, and a dozen smaller apps that are basically C.ai clones with fewer filters. Some of them are decent. Most of them are subscription traps with aggressive monetisation and models that aren’t much better than what C.ai used to offer.
The privacy-conscious crowd — people who actually care that their conversations are being read, moderated, and used as training data — started looking at local AI. Running your own model on your own computer, where nobody can read your conversations, ban your characters, or inject ads into your stories.
That last group is who I built Biggly for. Not because I’m chasing the “uncensored AI” crowd (though yes, there are no content filters). But because I think the whole model is broken. You shouldn’t have to rent access to a fictional character. You shouldn’t need permission to write the story you want to write. And a company shouldn’t be able to delete your characters overnight because their automated system had a bad day.
Biggly is a desktop app. It runs on your PC. Your characters live on your machine, in an encrypted database that nobody else can access. They remember your conversations across sessions — actually remember, not “maybe if the context window is large enough” remember. And they develop over time through a story engine that was designed specifically for narrative progression, not engagement metrics.
It’s not for everyone. You need a Windows PC, and if you want to run AI locally you need a decent graphics card (though you can also connect to cloud providers like OpenRouter if your PC isn’t beefy enough). It’s a one-time purchase, not a subscription. There’s a free 7-day trial.
But mostly, it’s for people who are tired of building sandcastles on someone else’s beach and watching the tide come in.
If any of that sounds like your kind of thing, there’s a free trial here. No account needed, no credit card, no “sign up with Google/Facebook/X.” Just download and go.
And if you’re happy on C.ai — genuinely happy, not just tolerating it — then more power to you. I’m not here to tell anyone their platform is wrong. I’m just here for the people who want a real alternative, for a small, one-time fee, then if you DO need online, a pre-paid private option, not another subscription.