AI that talks back: Character AI in the spotlight with Karandeep Anand at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 (techcrunch.com)

Karandeep Anand, CEO of Character.AI, will headline a fireside chat at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 to unpack the rapid rise of human-like AI companions. Anand — who leads a platform with roughly 20 million monthly active users and a roadmap that now includes video generation, monetization initiatives, and strategic partnerships — will address the technical breakthroughs that enable lifelike dialogue alongside the ethical, legal, and regulatory scrutiny that comes with deploying conversational agents at scale. His track record at Brex, Meta and Microsoft gives context to the operational and product challenges Character.AI faces as it moves beyond chat to multimodal experiences. The session matters because it spotlights real-world tradeoffs in building and scaling conversational AI: large-scale dialogue models and persona-conditioning techniques drive fluency and long-context engagement, but require robust safety alignment, content moderation, and IP/privacy safeguards. Expanding into video generation introduces new multimodal model challenges and regulatory vectors, while monetization pushes product teams to balance user experience with guardrails. For founders, investors and practitioners, Anand’s discussion promises practical takeaways on engineering for scale, legal risk management, and viable business models for next‑gen conversational and multimodal AI.