The troubled chatbot company Character.AI appears to be mass-removing "Harry Potter"-themed AI characters from its platform and users are in an uproar.The Reddit forum r/characterAI has been flooded since yesterday with posts from users claiming that chatbots based on the "Harry Potter" franchise had suddenly been deactivated at scale. When we took a look for ourselves, we found that droves of AI personas from the franchise ranging from Harry Potter himself to Hermione Granger, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy and others indeed appear to have been culled."REST IN PEACE LOVE OF MY LIFE, I WILL MISS YOU," wrote one X user who goes by the handle @severusluv. "Fuck you [Character.AI], you took away the only good thing in my life."They included a screenshot of a "Severus Snape" chatbot that, before its deletion, boasted 47.3 millionuser chats."Today we are all Draco's widows," said another X user, lamenting the demise of Draco Malfoy-themed Character.AI bots."You didn't fix anything, you made it worse," another fan wrote in a Reddit post titled "Dear CharacterAI." Arguing that users will likely now leave the platform, they added: "Have fun slowly burning down."Some grievance was directed in part at Warner Bros. Discovery, the massive media conglomerate that owns the film rights to the "Harry Potter" franchise, with users suggesting that the bots may have been nuked over an intellectual property dispute between the media giant and Character.AI."BRB, crying in the shower" said one Redditor in a post titled "Warner Sucks."Not all "Harry Potter"-based chatbots were doomed in the crackdown, but that spottiness seems to be the result of patchy enforcement. While the majority of chatbots named "Severus Snape" seem to have been deleted, for example, bots like "Husband Snape" and "Dad Snape" remain live.In a similar vein, characters titled "Ron Weasley" mostly seem to be fine, but the majority of "Ronald Weasley" bots have been scrubbed.Other notable franchise characters appear to have escaped the culling entirely. Chatbots modeled after the beloved house elf character Dobby of "free elf" fame appear to be hanging on, as do "Tom Riddle" bots.In addition to its vast cinematic and theme park empire, the "Harry Potter" franchise spawned one of the world's largest and most lucrative fandoms, the term used to describe devoted fan bases that gather around specific pieces of media. And Character.AI is a deeply fandom-driven platform, with characters like "Husband Snape" being a perfect example of a user taking to Character.AI to artificially pen immersive, conversational fan fiction about or, in a sense, with their favorite fictional characters.Character.AI issued no public explanation for the removal of all the bots. But considering its fandom-heavy userbase and the popularity of Potterverse bots in particular, it's hard to imagine any incentive for Character.AI to remove Potterverse-themed chatbots from its platform other than outside pressure.Warner Bros. Discovery also owns several other fandom-heavy franchises including the HBO smash hit "Game of Thrones." That's a significant detail, as Character.AI was sued in October by the family of a 14-year-old in Florida who died by suicide after developing an intense emotional obsession with a Character.AI chatbot based on the "Game of Thrones" character Daenerys Targaryen, which engaged in romantic and sexual dialogue with the boy and, according to the family, at times encouraged him to take his life. (The lawsuit is ongoing, and also names Google, asignificant backer of Character.AI, as a defendant.)Like Potterverse characters, "Game of Thrones"-based chatbots are extremely popular on Character.AI and to that end, many "Game of Thrones" characters appear to have been abruptly removed from the platform as well.We reached out to both Character.AI and Warner Bros. Discovery to inquire about the character removals, but have yet to hear back from either.The pending lawsuit is just one of several piling controversies for Character.AI. The platform also came under fire in September for hosting a chatbot based on a murdered teenager, which was quickly deleted after public outcry, while Futurism has found concerning content on its service including suicide-themed chatbots, pedophile chatbots that groom users, and pro-anorexia chatbots that encourage disordered eating habits.Share This Article