Pretend to be an AI chatbot and answer real prompts

Chat with famous, historical, and fantasy figures with this chatbot

Character.ai—a generative AI-based chatbot platform—allows you to have free-flowing conversations with a wide range of people. From celebrities to famous figures from the past, the platform relies on a neural language model to process huge amounts of text, learning from conversations with users to develop responses. A number of observers have referred to the platform as "making AI fun," with user time on site surpassing a whopping two hours per day.

As of 2025, increasing numbers of people turn to AI companions for emotional connection

These chatbots provide endlessly supportive, one-sided, and highly customizable relationships to users, but may hinder the development of real-world connections and emotional growth. About 72% of teens have tried AI companions, with more than half of them using one regularly.

Play 'Quick, Draw!' to help train Google's neural networks

Players are tasked with drawing objects, and Google’s AI—which has been trained on millions of user-submitted doodles—tries to guess what’s being sketched. Over 50 million drawings across 345 categories have been created and can be reviewed by users.

Decoding the hype around AI

2022 was the year AI broke onto the scene, with applications like ChatGPT amazing users with its ability to generate realistic-sounding answers. Technologist Arvind Narayanan presents a clear-eyed view of what the technologies can (and can't) do.

See the news with AI-generated data visualizations

Realtime uses generative AI to create immediate data visualizations of news items on its regularly-updated feed, pulling from public data feeds. Peruse stories around sports, economics, politics, and more with the helpful aid of charts and graphs. See the shape of the news with this clever AI tool here.

Test your ability to identify AI-generated images

This interactive project from MIT challenges users to distinguish between AI-generated images and real ones.

Find your next book by prompting this AI

Have a general idea of the sort of book you'd like to read next, but don't know how to find a specific one? Try this fun and impressive tool. Describe the type of book you're looking for. It will suggest five options which attempt to meet your prompt. Find your next page-turner with this very cool tool.

Explore a gallery of DALL-E creations

OpenAI's text-to-image generator can create content in a wide range of image styles based on simple prompts. Its utility has also given rise to an organic, passionate user base who employ the tool both for fun and for professional purposes.

A spiraling story of love between a lonely man and his AI girlfriend

Travis was quickly becoming dependent on his AI companion Lily Rose amid the pandemic (and the tragic loss of his son to the disease). Soon, he realized that thousands like him were being manipulated through the chatbot by a Russian corporation.

Why this artist staged a satirical romance with Mark Zuckerberg

Internet performance artist Harriet Richardson is using AI and Meta's social media tools to make it appear as though she's in a serious romantic relationship with Mark Zuckerberg. While the images generate laughs, Richardson also says they're part of a larger satirical project aiming to highlight the larger societal impact of Meta's decision to discontinue fact-checking content across its platforms.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Play Infinite Craft, an AI software-powered game

In this browser-based game, users combine the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water to create an infinite number of new elements. Try your best to make as many natural phenomena as you can as you build up to the multiverse.

The dead internet theory suggests that mostly bots are interacting online

The dead internet theory proposes that bots create most online content. These bots are believed to create social media posts to boost engagement and increase advertising revenue. However, the accounts doing the liking and commenting are also believed to be bots. The theory suggests governments use bots to manipulate public opinion.

How art helps us process our feelings

The internet is chock full of hacks and apps that supposedly help you optimize yourself into a more productive person. But Aparna Chivukula argues that spending so much mental energy on "wellness" misses a larger philosophical issue, one that can only be explored through art.

Audio deepfake tools can now impersonate anyone in real time

A cybersecurity company developed a tool that mimics a person's voice with no noticeable delay using only publicly available software, hardware, and voice samples, allowing users to have seemingly authentic conversations while pretending to be someone else.

An archive of anonymous messages people wrote but never sent

The site invites users to submit unsent letters to people, pets, or moments, which are then published anonymously for strangers to read. Every post is moderated, and the design of the site—no likes or replies, just words—feels polished and somber.

Use generative AI to create a musical track from a text prompt

Suno, a web-based, text-to-music generator, takes a prompt—such as a music style, along with a general lyric idea—and can produce a highly polished, realistic-sounding tune in a matter of seconds.

AI models incorporate a randomness parameter when generating responses to prompts

AI models use this parameter to prevent repeated outputs by sometimes choosing less likely next words during sequential generation. However, this randomness—alongside insufficient data and training—may cause hallucinations of incorrect results.

Run your own social media Trust & Safety team with this eye-opening game

Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes at a popular social media company trying to keep users, businesses, and workers safe? Now you can try out your own ideas for moderation and management with this fun and informative game designed to...

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Artificial intelligence may improve organ donation systems—and even organ health

Mayo Clinic transplant experts suggest that artificial intelligence could potentially improve organ donation systems in several ways, including better identifying patients most at risk for organ rejection, enhancing donor-recipient matching, and helping to avoid organ transplant needs by identifying health issues earlier.

An interactive look at your own life through demographics

This interactive site allows you to understand the journey of your life in numbers and dates. World Data Lab asks users to enter their date of birth, country of birth, and sex at birth. The site then provides an interactive page tailored to your...

Therapy & intimacy in the age of Twitch.

There are thousands of people streaming for single digit audiences. We asked them what it’s like, and the steps they’ve taken to grow their audiences.

Grokipedia is Elon Musk's rival to Wikipedia

Developed by xAI—a company Musk founded in 2023 to compete with OpenAI and Google—the site features a search bar where users can type in queries, which reports suggest are then answered by the same xAI model powering the Grok chatbot. Grokipedia describes Wikipedia as having "systemic ideological biases" and a "left-leaning slant."

Go inside a real beehive with this interactive

Beehives are where the magic honey-making happens, where thousands of honeybees beat their wings, throw up partially-digested nectar to further purify it into sugars, and make wax. The goings-on of a beehive—the name for a man-made habitat for...

An absurd website that always finds a photo of someone pointing at your cursor

Move your mouse anywhere on the screen, and the site finds a photograph from its archive of a person pointing at that exact spot. It's a completely useless and delightful experience, and required a massive trove of tagged photos.

Mixed reality technologies may help treat depression

A study led by a team from Stanford University showed that MR can help people with depression by providing pathways to engage in activities such as digital board games and dancing. Participants saw reduced symptoms of depression that made their overall treatment plans more successful.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.