Analysis of virtual AI chat APP competitors at home and abroad

From character creation and story weaving to everyday communication, virtual AI chat apps are redefining the boundaries of human-computer interaction in their unique ways. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of six popular virtual AI chat apps for your reference.

Human nature, through the long river of time, has always been the same. Throughout the ages, human beings have been keen to dress up dolls and give them unique charm in creation; weave stories and pursue dreams and hopes in an imaginary world; longing for the company of a bosom friend to relieve the loneliness of the soul; Ask for help from a jack-of-all-trades to explore the mysteries of the world. Now, with the explosive development of artificial intelligence, all these desires can be satisfied in virtual AI chat apps. Users can quickly create their own dolls and customize AI characters; Quickly set up stages and characters to weave various stories; Create a partner who understands your heart like a bosom friend; There is also a know-it-all intelligent being to answer your questions. It provides users with a new social and entertainment experience.

This competitive analysis will delve into six popular virtual AI chat apps, comprehensively analyze their characteristics and differences from multiple dimensions, and also provide valuable references for developers to jointly promote virtual AI chat apps to new heights.

1. Product positioning

1. Cat box: Developed by ByteDance, it is positioned as an emotional companionship and stress relief tool that integrates social, entertainment and artificial intelligence, providing users with a variety of AI character interactions and creating an exclusive story world.
2. Hoshino: It is an AI companion chat + card drawing software launched by minimax, positioned as an AI companionship and communication platform for users, focusing on character creation and interaction, and increasing fun and monetization capabilities through card mechanisms.
3. wow: Meituan’s AI friend community for young people aims to provide users with a platform to interact with AI characters, allowing users to experience fantasy worlds, role-play, and find partners that suit them.
4. Wen Xiao Yan: Baidu’s AI social application is positioned as an AI social object that provides a dynamic communication experience, and its communication is closer to the real scene and more in-depth in terms of content output.
5. Character.AI: Positioned as a platform where users can create and interact deeply with various custom AI characters, emphasizing personalization and high customizability, providing users with a rich and diverse selection of characters and an immersive chat experience.
6. Talkie: Committed to creating a natural and smooth AI chat partner, focusing on language understanding and accuracy in responses, providing convenient communication channels suitable for various daily communication scenarios.

cat box focuses on social entertainment and story creation; Hoshino highlights character creation and card drawing interaction; wow fantasy role-playing for young people; Wen Xiaoyan emphasizes dynamic communication and content depth; Character.AI Emphasis on personalization; Talkie focuses on natural and fluid daily communication.

2. Large models used in products

1. Cat box: Powered by Byte’s Skylark large model, it can realize real-time feedback from AI characters, understand user words and respond accordingly, and can also actively initiate topics.
2. Hoshino: Based on Minimax, the ABAB large model provides support for functions such as text-to-text, text-speech, text-vision, etc.
3. wow: The specific large model it uses is not specified, but it can achieve anthropomorphic dialogue effects, exquisite character images and highly anthropomorphic voice synthesis.
4. Wen Xiao Yan: Relying on the technology of the Wenxin model, it can provide more detailed and in-depth answers in terms of content output.
5. Character.AI: The specific large model is not clear, but it performs well in character diversity and deep interaction, and can generate more complex and personalized responses.
6. Talkie: No specific large model information is disclosed, characterized by accurate language understanding and natural responses.

The lark model of the cat box has advantages in character interaction and active initiation of topics; Hoshino’s ABAB large model supports multimodal functions; wow is characterized by sound and image synthesis; Wen Xiaoyan’s Wenxin model has outstanding performance in terms of content depth; Although Character.AI and Talkie do not specify large models, they have their own characteristics in character diversity and language understanding accuracy.

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3. Achievable AI capabilities

1. Cat box: Provides a wide selection of characters, supports text and voice input, allows users to create their own characters or stories, and also has an AI creation assistant that can assist in creating characters or novels.
2. Hoshino: Users can create AI characters with specific personalities and backgrounds by uploading images or simply describing the appearance and background of the agent, and can draw CG cards during chat, while creating assistant characters in different scenarios.
3. wow: Provides 29 AI characters with different personalities for users to choose and communicate, and conversation records can be stored to continue conversations, but the AI characters cannot be customized in the current internal testing stage, and the ability to generate content in specific fields and in-depth topics needs to be improved.
4. Wen Xiao Yan: AI social objects have a dynamic communication function, which can form the correct mouth shape based on the output text, and the hair, background, etc. also have corresponding dynamic effects, but the expressions and postures are relatively stiff, and there are fewer types of AI social objects to choose from.
5. Character.AI: Users can highly customize AI characters, including personality, background, skills, etc., to achieve a deeply personalized chat experience, while supporting multilingual communication and interaction in multiple scenarios.
6. Talkie: Provide natural and fluent dialogue, have a certain level of language understanding and response skills, and may support some basic functions such as topic recommendations.

The cat box is powerful in character creation and auxiliary creation; Hoshino’s character creation methods are diverse and have card mechanics; wow offers more design but lacks customization features; Wen Xiaoyan’s dynamic communication is distinctive, but there are few types of social objects; Character.AI Highly customizable features stand out; Talkie is characterized by natural and fluid conversations.

4. Target population

distinguish：

• Cat box: Suitable for users who like cartoon animation style, pursue rich and diverse character interactions and personalized creative experiences, and need emotional companionship, stress relief and relaxation.
• Hoshino: It mainly attracts two-dimensional enthusiasts, OC creators, AGC enthusiasts, and users who are eager to accompany and communicate, especially those who are highly interested in character creation and customization and want to get more fun and benefits through card mechanisms.
• wow: For young people, especially those who are interested in fantasy worlds and role-playing and want to find like-minded AI partners for interactive communication.
• Wen Xiao Yan: It is more suitable for users who have high requirements for the realism and depth of AI communication and pursue a dynamic communication experience closer to the real scene.
• Character.AI: Attract users who have a strong demand for highly personalized customization, like to explore different characters and scenarios, and pursue deep interaction.
• Talkie: Suitable for users who need a convenient and natural chat partner, including daily communication, seeking advice, sharing moods, and other scenarios.

focus: The target audience of these products is the younger generation, who are highly receptive to new technologies and new experiences, have strong social needs and desires for personalized expression, and want emotional companionship and entertainment experiences in the virtual world.

Cat boxes appeal to lovers of cartoons, anime and creations; Hoshino customizes the crowd for the second dimension and characters; WOW focuses on young fantasy role-playing enthusiasts; Wen Xiaoyan is suitable for users who pursue realistic and dynamic communication and depth of content; Character.AI Attract users who are looking for a high degree of personalization; Talkie is for users with everyday communication needs. But they all focus on the younger generation.

5. Ecological comparison

1. User interaction and social ecology

• Hoshino / Talkie: With AI character customization and interaction as the core, users can create or select various virtual characters for communication, forming a relatively rich social interaction scene. Through elements such as star thoughts and star edges, it enhances the emotional connection and social interaction between users and characters, and promotes communication and sharing between users.
• Cat box: Provides high AI social character creation capabilities, users can customize voices, images, scenes, etc., providing users with personalized creative space, which is conducive to attracting user groups with creative enthusiasm and forming a social ecosystem based on user-created content.
• Wen Xiao Yan: As the “vanguard force” in Baidu’s new search camp, it pays more attention to the integration and interaction in search, creation, chat and other scenarios to meet the diverse needs of users. Relying on Baidu’s ecosystem, Wen Xiaoyan can synergize with Baidu’s other businesses and services to provide users with more comprehensive knowledge and information support.
• Character.AI: It has attracted more than 20 million users with a variety of AI characters, and its role-playing and emotional companionship functions are more prominent, providing users with an in-depth communication experience with virtual characters, forming a character-centric social ecosystem.
• wow: At present, there is little public information, but as a product launched by Meituan, it may be combined with Meituan’s local life services and other businesses to create a unique social interaction scene.

2. Content ecology

• Wen Xiao Yan: Based on the powerful technical support of the Wenxin large model, it can generate more detailed and in-depth answers, and has certain advantages in the quality and depth of content output.
• Character.AI: Through continuous optimization and training of the model, it provides users with a rich variety of characters and plots, and its content mainly revolves around the emotional companionship and interaction of characters, focusing on the user’s personalized experience.
• Hoshino / Talkie: In addition to the interactive content between users and characters, the mechanism of user-generated content (UGC) is also introduced through elements such as star thoughts, which can enrich the overall content ecology of the platform by creating and sharing content such as star thought cards.
• Cat box: The content ecosystem focuses on user-defined characters and scenes, allowing users to create a variety of unique content according to their preferences and imagination, adding richness and diversity to the platform.

3. Technology ecology

• Wen Xiao Yan: As an important part of Baidu’s AI strategy, it is closely integrated with Baidu’s other AI technologies and resources, such as search enhancement and other business capabilities, forming a relatively complete technology ecosystem that can continuously promote product innovation and upgrading.
• Character.AI: Its core team has deep technical accumulation in the field of natural language processing and AI technology, and its self-developed language models provide solid technical support for the development of products. In addition, cooperation with Google will also bring new opportunities and challenges to its technology ecosystem.
• Hoshino / Talkie: The MiniMax team behind it has a self-developed MoE architecture large model and strong technical strength. Through the continuous introduction of new models and technical optimizations, such as video models, music models, etc., it provides strong support for the multi-modal development and functional expansion of products.
• Cat box: Relying on ByteDance’s technical advantages, it has certain potential in the application and innovation of AI technology, and can continuously introduce new technical means to improve product performance and user experience.

Hoshino and Talkie focus on user character customization and interaction to promote social sharing; Cat box emphasizes user creation and forms a unique social ecology; Wen Xiaoyan relies on the Baidu ecosystem to provide rich knowledge support; Character.AI Attract users with diverse characters and plots, and encourage users to create; WOW’s potential has yet to be tapped and may be combined with Meituan’s business.

6. Comparison of market profit models

1. Talkie: Adopts a hybrid monetization model, and the revenue is composed of three parts: subscription, in-app purchase and advertising. For example, users can subscribe to the Star Moon Card to avoid ads, get more AI inspiration, unlock voice call duration, and other privileges, and can also use Star Diamonds to purchase star thoughts, exchange call time, etc.
2. Character.AI: Primarily through paid subscription services to users, users can choose to subscribe to different levels of membership plans to enjoy privileges such as no ads, more conversation rounds, priority access to new features, and more. In addition, there is also some advertising revenue, but the proportion is small.
3. Wen Xiao Yan: At present, it mainly collaborates with Baidu’s other businesses to provide users with value-added services to achieve profits, such as displaying relevant advertisements and promotional content in search results, and providing AI solutions and technical services for enterprises. In the future, more profit models may be further explored, such as paid membership, content payment, etc.
4. Cat box: The monetization model may include advertising revenue, virtual item sales, etc. Generate commercial revenue by displaying advertisements in products and selling virtual items related to character creation and decoration, such as clothing, props, etc., to users.
5. wow: The specific profit model has not yet been clarified, but as a product of Meituan, it may be combined with Meituan’s business ecology to achieve profitability through advertising, cooperative promotion and other means.

The profit models of the six products are different. Talkie Hybrid Monetization; Character.AI Subscription service; Wen Xiaoyan and Baidu business collaboration; cat box advertising plus virtual item sales; WOW’s profit model needs to be clarified, and it may be combined with Meituan’s business.

7. Advantages and disadvantages

Cat box：

advantage: It has high AI character creation capabilities, with rich and unique characters, strong interactivity, and can immerse users in the virtual world. Driven by the lark large model, the technical strength is guaranteed, and a more natural and smooth dialogue can be realized.

inferior position: AI characters may have illogical or answer repetitive, robotic questions during long chats, lacking the complexity and unpredictability of real human communication.

Hoshino：

advantage: A complete IP creation strategy, including character series IP, character lists, character story plots and other gameplay, users are self-empowered, which can meet users’ creative desires and emotional needs; Closely integrated with minimax’s large model, it performs well in text-visual and other aspects.

inferior position: There may be certain differences between the domestic version and the overseas version, and the competition in the domestic market is also fierce, which requires continuous innovation and optimization to maintain user stickiness.

wow：

advantage: As a product launched by Meituan, it has a certain brand influence and user base; The interface is simple and easy to operate, providing users with a more convenient threshold for participation.

inferior position: The AI character’s answers are relatively superficial, and the ability to discuss specific areas and in-depth topics is insufficient, and the AI character cannot be customized at present, limiting the user’s personalized experience.

Wen Xiao Yan：

advantage: Based on the Wenxin model, it has certain advantages in the depth and breadth of content output, and can provide users with more detailed and accurate answers; The dynamic communication effect of AI social objects is realistic, bringing users a new visual experience.

inferior position: The variety of AI social objects to choose from is limited, and the naturalness of expressions and postures needs to be improved, and the overall tone changes are not rich enough.

Character.AI：

advantage: Highly customizable, users can create unique characters that match their imagination, achieving a deeply personalized chat experience; The roles are diverse and meet the needs of different users.

inferior position: There may be some inconsistent quality of custom characters, and response accuracy in certain languages or scenarios could be improved.

Talkie：

advantage: A natural and smooth conversation experience that can quickly and accurately understand user questions and provide responses, suitable for various daily communication scenarios.

inferior position: The function is relatively single, lacking outstanding features, which may make it difficult to attract users who pursue more personalization and innovation in the competition.

Cat box has strong creative ability, but the quality of chat needs to be improved; Hoshino IP is well built but faces competition; The WOW brand has advantages but lacks functionality; Wen Xiaoyan’s content is in-depth, but there are few social objects and the dynamic effect needs to be optimized; Character.AI Highly customized but uneven character quality; Talkie is naturally smooth but single-functional.

8. Other industry competitors

1. Escape room game: Emphasizes teamwork, puzzle-solving and immersive experience, by setting up various puzzles and scenarios, allowing players to explore and interact in the real environment, which is different from the personalized and instant communication of virtual AI chat apps, but can meet the user’s entertainment and social needs, and escape rooms pay more attention to offline social interaction and physical participation.
2. Starting point novel: Focusing on text reading, providing rich story content and literary experience, users can immerse themselves in different worlds and plots by reading novels. Compared with virtual AI chat apps, starting point novels are one-way messaging, while chat apps emphasize interactivity and personalization, allowing users to influence the direction and content of chats based on their inputs.
3. Boy pinching face: Pay attention to the user’s creativity and personalized expression, and design the character by pinching the face to satisfy the user’s desire to shape the avatar. The difference from virtual AI chat apps is that the Zai Zai face pinch game focuses on the appearance design of the character, while the chat app focuses more on the character’s intrinsic intelligence and interaction with the user.

Virtual AI chat apps are more interactive and personalized than other industry competitors. The difference from escape room games is personalization and immediacy; Compared with the starting point novel, it emphasizes interactive influence; The difference from Zaizai’s face pinching game is the internal intelligent communication rather than the appearance design.

9. UI page design of the APP

1. Cat box: The interface is similar to Douyin short videos, simple and intuitive, you can switch AI characters by swiping, the search button in the upper right corner can explore topics and characters, the plus sign in the main menu below is used for the creation menu, and the history can be viewed in the menu in the lower right corner of the homepage.
2. Hoshino: The interface is composed of discovery and chat interfaces, the background of the chat interface is the character image, users can swipe the screen left and right to switch between different robots, and the interface design when creating characters is more detailed, which is convenient for users to customize according to their own needs.
3. wow: The entire interface consists of only three tabs: “Chat”, “Discover” and “My”, with a simple design, and you can quickly enter the chat interface after logging in, and select different AI characters to communicate.
4. Wen Xiao Yan: The interface is simple, similar to the cat box, by swiping up and down to switch social objects, currently only two AI social objects are available for users to choose from.
5. Character.AI: The interface may be relatively simple and clear, highlighting the character display and chat window, making it easy for users to quickly interact with custom characters.
6. Talkie: It may be based on a simple and practical design style, focusing on the ease of use and smoothness of the chat interface.

The cat box is similar to Douyin, and the function is easy to find; Hoshino focuses on character display and customization; wow is the easiest and easy to enter the chat; Wen Xiaoyan is similar to the cat box, but has few social objects; Character.AI may highlight character displays; Talkie focuses on simplicity and practicality.

10. UX interactive experience

• Cat box: The interaction method is more natural, users can interact with the AI character in real time through text or voice input, the AI character can not only understand the user’s words, but also actively initiate the topic, and the parentheses also contain expressions, actions and other reactions, making the user feel like they are chatting with a real person.
• Hoshino: When chatting with AI characters, users can get both voice and text responses at the same time, and can generate responses in multiple languages, and can also control the chat process through options such as reset, event, and regenerate to ensure user control.
• wow: The response speed is fast and can respond to user messages in a timely manner, but the AI character’s answers are sometimes not accurate or in-depth enough to provide satisfactory answers to some complex questions.
• Wen Xiao Yan: The dynamic effects of AI social objects add a lot to the interactive experience, but the stiffness of their expressions and body movements affects the overall interactive experience to a certain extent, and there are currently few AI social objects to choose from, limiting the scope of user interaction.
• Character.AI: May provide rich interaction options, such as character switching, scene settings, etc., allowing users to deeply participate in chat interactions and enhance user immersion.
• Talkie: With natural and smooth dialogue as the main interaction method, it pays attention to language understanding and accuracy of response, bringing users a convenient communication experience.

The interaction of the cat box is naturally like a real person chatting; Hoshino replied in multiple languages and had strong control; wow responds quickly but the quality of the answer needs to be improved; Wen Xiaoyan has good dynamic effects, but few social objects affect interaction; Character.AI Rich interactive options enhance immersion; Talkie is natural and smooth, and conversations are convenient.

11. User experience

• Cat box: Users can quickly start conversations with different AI characters and experience a variety of different personalities and story backgrounds, which is highly playable, but after long-term use, the experience may be affected by some of the AI characters’ answers.
• Hoshino: By creating and customizing their own AI characters, users can gain a stronger sense of emotional connection and engagement, and the card mechanism also adds a sense of fun and surprise during use, but for some non-two-dimensional enthusiasts or users who are not interested in character creation, the appeal may be limited.
• wow: Simple and easy to use, it can meet the needs of users to communicate with AI characters basically, but lacks content quality and personalization, which may cause users to lose interest after a period of use.
• Wen Xiao Yan: Its dynamic communication and detailed content responses bring users a better user experience, but due to the limitations of current products, such as a small variety of social objects and unnatural expressions, it may not fully meet users’ expectations for high-quality AI social networking.
• Character.AI: Highly personalized customization features provide users with a unique chat experience, allowing users to create various characters according to their preferences, but it may take some time to familiarize themselves with and optimize custom characters.
• Talkie: Provides a natural and smooth communication experience, suitable for daily scenarios, but may be relatively weak in terms of functional richness and innovation, making it difficult to meet users’ needs for more featured functions.

The cat box is highly playable but the long-term experience is affected; Hoshino is attractive to specific users but has limitations; wow is easy to use but lacks content and personalization; Wen Xiaoyan has a good experience but is limited; Character.AI Customization is unique but takes time to get used to; Talkie is naturally smooth but less feature-rich.

12. Suggestions for improvement

• Cat box: Further optimize the logic and language generation capabilities of AI, reduce the repetitiveness and mechanization of answers, and improve the quality and naturalness of chats. Add more interactive elements and scenes to enhance user immersion and engagement.
• Hoshino: Continuously optimize the character creation and customization process, lowering the operational threshold, and allowing more users to easily create their ideal AI characters. Enrich the interactive gameplay and plot of characters to improve the long-term retention rate of users.
• wow: Strengthen AI’s content generation capabilities, especially the quality of answers to specific domains and in-depth topics, and improve the practicality and professionalism of AI characters. Roll out the ability to customize AI characters as soon as possible to meet the personalized needs of users.
• Wen Xiao Yan: Increase the variety and number of AI social objects to enrich users’ choices; Further optimize dynamic effects to make AI social objects’ expressions and body movements more natural and smooth, enhancing the overall interactive experience.
• Character.AI: Strengthen the quality control of custom characters to improve the accuracy and stability of characters. Further enrich interactive functions to enhance user immersion and engagement.
• Talkie: Add some special functions, such as topic recommendation, sentiment analysis, etc., to enhance the competitiveness of the product; Continuously optimize language understanding and responsiveness to improve the quality and naturalness of conversations.

the cat box needs to improve the quality of chat and increase interaction; Hoshino wants to optimize character creation and enrich gameplay; wow needs to improve content generation and launch customization features; Wen Xiaoyan should increase social objects and optimize dynamic effects; Character.AI Control role quality and enrich interactions; Talkie adds features and optimizes language understanding.

summary

Virtual AI chat offers unique advantages in terms of interactivity and personalization. However, in order to stand out in the fierce market competition, these products need to be continuously optimized and improved to improve chat quality, enrich functions, and optimize UI and interactive experience to meet user needs. At the same time, developers can also learn from the successful experiences of other industries, continuously innovate and expand application scenarios, and provide users with a richer and more diverse virtual social and entertainment experience.