Character AI privacy policy changes: every version since 2022, dated

The Morse teamPublished November 8, 202610 min read

Character AI privacy policy changes add up to five versions of its privacy policy that we could read, from an undated policy in force by September 2022 to the one effective July 1, 2026, plus a rewrite of its European privacy notice that took effect November 5, 2026, three days before we wrote this. The changes that mattered most were training on your chats, written in on October 25, 2023; ads, voice recordings, and your date of birth, added August 27, 2025; and, on November 5, 2026, a statement that Character.AI doesn't train on the personal data of users in Europe and the UK.

On November 8, 2026, we read Character.AI's current privacy policy, its regional privacy disclosures, its terms of service, the 2023 policy and terms it still hosts at its own addresses, four of its help center articles, and its blog posts on teen safety, a 2024 data incident, and the bankruptcy. For versions Character.AI no longer hosts, we read copies of its own policy pages saved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, and used the Wayback Machine for nothing else. We compared each version with the one before it, sentence by sentence. Character.AI earns credit for keeping its 2023 policy online at a fixed address, and for saying so in writing when it changed the rules for European users.

When did Character.AI change its privacy policy?

Four times after the earliest version we found, and its European notice changed again on November 5, 2026. The table also lists the company announcements that changed what the policy covers.

The terms of service changed on their own schedule. The 2022 terms carry three dates in the Wayback Machine's copies (September 8, November 15, and December 19, 2022); the terms were rewritten on October 25, 2023, alongside the policy; and the current terms are dated August 27, 2025 (Character.AI).

When did Character.AI start training on your chats?

The policy first said so on October 25, 2023. The version before it, in force from at least September 2022 to at least September 30, 2023, lists its uses as providing, maintaining, and improving the service, analyzing it, and developing "new programs and services," and never uses the word "train" (Wayback copy). The October 2023 rewrite names "chat communications" among what Character.AI collects and adds, as a use, "to train our artificial intelligence/machine learning models" (Character.AI).

Character.AI's own training disclosure, written for California's AB 2013 law, reaches further back. It says "we started collecting and using data for model development in 2021," from sources that include "text content and interaction data from users" (Character.AI). The policy first named training in October 2023, two years after the year that disclosure gives.

The newest notice runs the other way for Europe. Since November 5, 2026, the European and UK notice no longer lists training among its purposes. It says Character.AI uses "third-party large language models" and does "not use our original training datasets nor users' personal data to train our legacy proprietary models" (Character.AI). Users elsewhere get no such statement. The global policy still lists training as a use, and the help center still says Character.AI keeps "certain data that you share with us to help train and improve our AI models" (Character.AI).

What changed in Character.AI's privacy policy in August 2025?

Ads, voice, and more about who you are. Character.AI's in-app notice said the new policy, terms, and regional disclosures would take effect "in thirty (30) days on August 27," and that continuing to use the service meant agreeing to the terms (Wayback copy of Character.AI's site). The text was posted early: by August 5, 2025, the policy page read "This Privacy Policy is effective August 27, 2025," with a link to the old one (Wayback copy).

Set side by side with the 2023 version, the August 2025 policy (Wayback copy):

• Turned on ads. The 2023 policy said "we do not engage in advertising as of the date of this Policy." The 2025 version lists "provision of tailored advertising" as a use and lets Character.AI disclose personal information to "advertising and analytics providers."
• Collected more about you. It added your phone number, your date of birth, and "recordings of your voice, if you chose to use certain voice features."
• Took in the public web. It added that Character.AI collects information "available on the Internet or from other publicly available sources," including "for model training and development."
• Kept more characters after you leave. In 2023, Character.AI could keep a public character active after you deleted your account if it "reaches a certain threshold of popularity." From 2025, the same applies to any character that "has been made available to other users."
• Raised the age floor in the UK. Users under 16 in the UK joined those in the EEA in being barred, with 13 the floor elsewhere.

The US State Privacy Notice that came with these disclosures now lists advertising providers as recipients of "sales" of your identifiers, your date of birth and age, your approximate location, your device activity, and inferences about your interests, as California law defines a sale. It lists no sales of chat communications (Character.AI). In 2022, the policy said, "We do not and will not sell your Personal Information."

What changed in Character.AI's privacy policy in 2026?

Two documents changed, both mainly about training. The July 1, 2026 policy added a paragraph on data "collected during the initial development and training of our proprietary models," and said "we no longer carry out this processing" (Character.AI).

The November 5, 2026 notice for the EEA and UK went further. Besides the training statement above, it adds a deletion promise those users didn't have in writing before: "Following deletion of your account, all chats and activity associated with your account will be deleted, unless continued retention is required for legal, security or dispute-resolution purposes." It also says that a kind of processing not mentioned in a region's section "is not taking place for that specific region" (Character.AI). The US notice in the same document is still dated July 1, 2026.

How have Character.AI's rules for teens changed?

From 16 and up, to 13 and up, to no open-ended chat for anyone under 18. The early 2023 change lowered the floor to 13 outside the EU. On December 12, 2024, Character.AI said it had built "a separate model specifically for our teen users" (Character.AI). On October 29, 2025, it said open-ended chat for users under 18 would end "no later than November 25" (Character.AI), and a November 21 post set the removal to begin in the US on November 24, 2025 (Character.AI).

As of a July 17, 2026 update, "all users are required to complete an age assurance check," run through Persona, and users verified as under 18 get a reading mode without chat (Character.AI). On September 3, 2026, Character.AI said it had "developed our own age assurance technology and an in-house age estimation model" (Character.AI). The European notice of November 5 limits what it keeps from those checks to "the time strictly necessary to perform the age assurance process." We cover what age checks collect across apps in AI age verification and privacy.

What happens to your Character.AI data in the sale?

The policy doesn't promise anything about a buyer. The 2022 policy said that in a "bankruptcy, receivership, or transition of service to another provider," your information could be "transferred to a successor." Every version since October 2023 names a "merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition" instead, and the word bankruptcy is gone (Character.AI).

Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 on October 12, 2026, and told users "your information continues to be protected under our Privacy Policy." Its sale notice, posted November 5, names Disney Worldwide Services as the stalking horse bidder for "certain assets" it calls the "Disney Target Assets," sets November 18 as the deadline to object to the sale, November 24 for bids, an auction on December 1, and a sale hearing on December 3 and 4, 2026 (Character.AI). The notice doesn't say whether user data is among the assets. Our guide to deleting your Character.AI account covers what deletion removes before a sale closes. This isn't legal advice.

Where can you read Character.AI's old privacy policies?

Partly on Character.AI's own site. As of November 8, 2026, the October 25, 2023 policy is still at character.ai/old-privacy and the 2023 terms at character.ai/old-tos, though no current page links to either. The August 2025 policy, which held for ten months, isn't at any address we found on character.ai; we read it only in the Wayback Machine. The 2022 and early 2023 policies carried no date at all, so the archive's capture dates are the only way to place them. Our comparison of 13 apps' policy change clauses shows how other companies notify users, and are Character.AI chats private covers who can read your chats under today's version.

How Morse keeps your characters out of the next policy change

Each policy change in the timeline rewrote the rules for chats Character.AI already held on its servers, with training in 2023 and ads in 2025, and the sale may put those chats under a new owner's policy. Morse is built so your roleplay isn't on our servers for a new policy to cover.

Characters, Morse's roleplay and companion chats, keeps your character chats, the characters you make, and your personas in your browser, encrypted. Unlocking them takes two keys, one that never leaves your device and one our server gives you when you sign in. Our servers don't keep your messages or log their content; the account holds sign-in details, your plan, your balance, and a usage ledger with no content. Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads, and runs no advertising trackers or third-party analytics, so there's no training clause, ad clause, or "sales" table to watch for. Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities.

Bringing your library over is free on every plan. Morse's importer brings your Character.AI characters, chats, and personas, with an exporter that runs only in your browser, talks only to Character.AI, and saves the file to your device; its code is open source under the MIT license. In Chat, each conversation also runs in a privacy mode you pick:

• Private, the default, so no host keeps a copy of a new story. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, so they keep nothing.
• E2EE, for anything no one should read. Your browser checks the enclave's hardware attestation, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and our servers relay ciphertext they can't read. This rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE comes with Pro, at $19 a month.
• Anonymous, for GPT, Claude, or Gemini without the provider knowing it's you. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address; the provider may keep the message for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy.

Morse is for adults only, and character chats show crisis lines when a message reads like suicidal thinking, checked on your device. Your history is stored only in your browser, so clearing your browser deletes it for good and we can't recover it; keep a copy of any story you care about. Our Character AI alternatives guide compares other places your characters could go.

Import your characters, then start free: the Free plan has no cap on character messages.