philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

One of America’s Hottest Entertainment Apps Is Chinese-Owned

It is a chatbot offering AI-generated conversations with Donald Trump, Taylor Swift or a customized romantic partner. It is one of America’s more popular entertainment apps. And unnoticed by many users, it is Chinese-owned. ...

Through June, Talkie ranks No. 5 among the most-downloaded free entertainment apps in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower, a market researcher. That ranking puts it behind the likes of Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Max,” Netflixand Tubi. ...

For China’s rising AI stars such as MiniMax, going abroad establishes a much-needed commercial and development pipeline at a time when China’s economyhas softened, access to high-end chips is blocked and regulations make innovation difficult. ...

Users can create their own virtual characters on the app, customizing their look, life story and even the sound of their voices. “Bring your wildest imagination to life,” Talkie promises users. ...

Conversation can unfold via text message or phone call—though not video—with the AI generating potential user responses. More interactions can reap rewards, such as a digital trading card of a user’s Talkie, which can be sold to others with the app’s in-house “gems” currency. ...

The Justice Department said Friday that TikTok collected data about its users’ views on sensitive topics and censored content at the direction of its China-based parent company, making its most forceful case to date that the video-sharing app poses a national-security threat. TikTok has said it wouldn’t comply with any such requests from Beijing. ...

Talkie’s parent MiniMax counts Alibaba and Tencent among its investors. It was valued at more than $2.5 billion in the latest round of investment in March,  ...

Talkie’s equivalent in China got pulled from major app stores early last year for sexually explicit content and politically sensitive material. When it relaunched in September with the new name of “Xingye,” or “star field” in Mandarin, some users said they could no longer send a text containing the word “country” or “China.” The AI lovers once would be receptive to users’ offers for a kiss. But no more. ...

More than half of Talkie’s 11 million monthly active users are in the U.S., with popularity also strong in the Philippines, the U.K. and Canada. That puts Talkie within striking distance of the leader in the AI chatbot-companion category, Character.AI, run by an Andreessen Horowitz-backed firm in Silicon Valley, which has roughly 17 million monthly users, according to Sensor Tower. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/one-of-americas-hottest-entertainment-apps-is-chinese-owned-04257355