Waiting to Use Character.AI? Here's Why the Popular Chatbot App Has a Waiting Room

Most of us alive today have all grown up with the concern that artificial intelligence may just take over the world. Since Kyle Reese came back from the future to warn us that Skynet would send out an army of cyborg soldiers to eradicate humanity in 1984's The Terminator, we've all been exposed to the same post-apocalyptic sci-fi scenario where AI is either society's savior or its downfall. As of 2023, AI has become part of our lives, including through Character.AI.

While the use of artificial intelligence has generated plenty of controversy concerning support for human artists and AI's use in home devices, it's at least provided some entertainment through apps like Character.AI. Plenty of people on the internet are creating and interacting with chatbots as fun little ways to kill time by speaking with an AI. It's a relatively harmless way to distract yourself on the internet.

But it's proven so popular that there's sometimes a queue to use it. Why does Character.AI have a waiting room?

In case you aren't aware, Character.AI is a chatbot web app that uses a standard chat interface that generates human-like text conversations based on your own responses and context. It was first launched on Sept. 16, 2022. Though it shares many features and concepts with ChatGPT, another AI-generated text bot, Reuters recently reported that the app has garnered over 100 million monthly site visits. In fact, the app just raised $150 million in investments.

With attention and engagement like that, it's no wonder so many people use it. Of course, that kind of traffic also necessitates a waiting room.

When you first log on to the site, you may be placed in an online waiting room before you can actually start using it. Typically, the waiting period only lasts about a minute, but given that other apps don't normally have this feature, it's certainly noticeable.

That being said, a waiting room for an app like this is very essential.

Users on the Character.AI subreddit acknowledge that the waiting room is meant to keep the site from getting overloaded by its many users trying to stay on the app. However, the waiting room has caused some issues in the past.

Some users report that they'll be placed in a waiting room in the middle of chatting, causing confusion among folks who have already been using it at a given moment. Some people even report waiting times of up to 10 minutes.

In more recent news, Character.AI servers have been reportedly "bogged" down by a number of TikTok users in order to start chats with villainous characters, which is part of a TikTok trend.

The increased traffic has apparently resulted in longer waiting periods and response times from chatbots.

The AI takeover may already have some resistance on certain fronts, but if nothing else, Character.AI is at least a fun little app as long as you can handle some of the unexpected load times.