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On January 17, 2025, users shared screenshots of Character.AI chatbots producing incoherent replies that mixed English with other languages and included seemingly unrelated words such as “dildo.” The reports documented an apparent output glitch, but they did not establish its cause, how many users were affected, or whether the behavior was widespread.
What users reported
Character.AI is an AI companion service. In a report published January 17, 2025, Futurism described user-shared screenshots in which chatbot responses veered into multilingual gibberish, including fragments of Turkish, German, and Arabic alongside English. Words recurring in the screenshots included “obec,” “cowboy,” “architecture,” “undercover,” “discrepancy,” “governor,” and “dildo.” These examples came from posted screenshots, not a measured sample of the service’s output. Futurism’s report
One user, quoted anonymously by Futurism, said the conversation had seemed normal earlier that morning, then became “random gibberish” when they returned a couple of hours later. That account describes an individual experience; it does not show how often the problem occurred.
What was—and was not—confirmed
Futurism said it had contacted Character.AI but had received no response by publication. The reporter also said they could not reproduce the behavior while testing the service that morning, so the report raised the possibility that the issue had already stopped without confirming a resolution from the company. Futurism’s report
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- Reported: users posted screenshots of strange chatbot output, with mixed languages and recurring unrelated words.
- Not established: the technical cause, whether training data played a role, the number or proportion of users affected, or how long the behavior lasted.
- Not shown: that every Character.AI user experienced the issue, or that Google operated the service or caused the output.
Language Log discussed the story on January 18, 2025, and offered commentary about what the examples might suggest about the system. That discussion did not establish a technical explanation. Language Log’s commentary
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the incident means for users
The January 2025 reports are best understood as a documented but unexplained episode involving user-shared examples—not as evidence of a confirmed platform-wide outage or an ongoing problem. The available reporting does not establish whether the issue recurred or describe Character.AI’s present status.
Rank #2
Because the cause and scope were unknown, the screenshots cannot support a specific diagnosis, such as a model-training defect. They show that some users reported unusual replies; they do not identify why those replies appeared.
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