Does Character.AI have an official app?

Yes, one per platform. Install it through the link on the service's website, not from store search results.

What's the risk with a website wrapper?

Everything you type passes through someone else's code. It looks like the same site, but a stranger sees your password on the way.

My password may have leaked through a copycat. What now?

Change your password on the service and everywhere you reused it, starting with the email account tied to your login.

Can I move my whole chat history out of Character.AI?

No, services don't hand over your history. Only the character description carries over, and only by hand.

Are Character.AI mirror sites safe?

No. Those pages exist to collect your logins and passwords, and they run until someone shuts them down.

Character.AI: The Official App, the Website, and How Not to Install a Fake

Updated October 12, 20266 min readЧитать по-русски

In brief

Character.AI has one website and one official app per platform. Everything else is a copycat. You can't spot them by name or icon, since those take five minutes to copy. You spot them by the developer, the age of the store listing and the install count. And the most important advice here isn't about installing anything at all: save your characters as text while you still have access.

Why Character.AI has so many copycats

Three things lined up. The name is everywhere, access from Russia works only some of the time, and people search for "download" instead of just opening the website. Someone who's already willing to install something from a random source, and expects it to be a bit weird, is the perfect target for fakes.

Copycats come in three kinds, and the difference matters:

Empty knockoffsSame name, similar icon, and inside it's ads plus some unrelated chatbot that has nothing to do with the original. They sit in the store for weeks until enough complaints pile up.
Website wrappersThe app loads the real website inside itself. Technically everything works, but everything you type, including your password, passes through someone else's layer.
Modded buildsFiles from third-party sites promising free premium. Why that promise can't be kept, period, is covered in our piece on cracked versions of AI chats.