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Not long ago, Appfigure summarized an annual AI trend report by sorting out 1000 AI applications (mobile). In the AI Companion section, data showed that the total downloads of this category in 2024 reached 110 million for the first time. The growth of downloads also promoted revenue growth.The annual in-house purchase revenue exceeded US$55 million, a year-on-year increase of 652%.
AI companionship has always been a popular track for AI application level entrepreneurship, but it has also experienced a stage of self-doubt. Although products with more than 40 million downloads have been born, commercialization is a headache. With the help of data, we also review what changes have taken place in AI companionship in the past year.
GenZ is the main user, and Asia has a strong presence
AI companionship may be the AI category with the largest number of young users. Appfigure’s statistics show that about 65% of AI companionship users are in the age group of 18-24. At the same time, men are still the main users of the AI companionship category, but the proportion of female users in this category (30.2%) has been significantly higher than the industry average, and this figure is only slightly lower than the distribution of female users in the AI education category (31.4%). And AI companionship user portraitsThere are roughly three characteristics: high acceptance of new technologies, familiarity with virtual content consumption such as secondary yuan, and pursuit of personalized interactive experience.
AI companionship is the AI category with the largest number of young users| Source: Appfigure
Statistics show that the AI companion category will see rapid growth, especially in the second half of 2024. It took 13 months for this category’s intra-month purchase revenue to reach the first US$2 million, and it took another 5 months to reach the first US$4 million. By September 2024, it took 2 months to push the category’s intra-month purchase revenue to $6 million +. At the end of 2024, the monthly revenue from in-house purchases in the AI companion category reached US$8.8 million for the first time, five times the level in January of the same year.
However, as mentioned above, judging from the scale of in-house purchase revenue, AI Companion is not actually a category with strong ability to attract money. The category revenue of US$8.8 million is about the same as the monthly purchase revenue of GoodShort, a product in the second echelon of short dramas going overseas. The same magnitude.
Growth trend chart of in-house purchase revenue in AI companionship category| Source: Appfigure
Judging from the national distribution of in-house purchase revenue, U.S. users are the main consumer, accounting for 57.4%, followed by China Taiwan (10.3%), Germany (6.1%), the United Kingdom (5.9%), Japan (5.1%) and South Korea (4.8%). Outside the United States, Asian countries especially show a strong sense of presence. In this regional market, a revenue black horse named “Lovey Dovey” has also emerged, and is currently ranked among the top 1 in cumulative in-purchase revenue.Total revenue in 2023-2024 will reach US$7.8 million, with the Asian market contributing more than 98% of revenue.
Compared with overall revenue data,As a strong brand, the oligopoly effect of “LoveDovey” in the Asian market is quite obviousIt is reported that the overall in-house purchase revenue of categories in China Taiwan and Japan during the same period was US$5.6 million and US$2.8 million respectively. that isThe full-year revenue of “LoveyDovey” was basically the same as the total revenue of the two major markets for the same period.
AI Companion Category Proportion of In-house Purchase Revenue Contribution in Different Countries| Source: Appfigure
Although the in-house purchase revenue of the AI companion category is not very good, it is already growing rapidly, with a year-on-year increase of 6 times + in 2024. Although the growth momentum of the download side is not as rapid as the revenue side, it is also growing significantly. In December 2024, the total number of downloads for the AI companion category that month reached 13 million, twice the level in January of the same year. Interestingly, looking at Q4 in 2024 as a whole, downloads in the United States actually dropped significantly, while downloads in other regions also stagnated. This trend may be partly negatively affected by the suicide of a 14-year-old boy obsessed with chat robots in Florida, which has caused parents to worry about the safety and applicability of such products, and has also prompted regulators to increase their efforts to review AI companionship product content and security, which has led to an escalation of external pressure.
In 2024, downloads of the Q4AI Companion category in the United States will drop significantly| Source: Appfigure
The download distribution shows that the United States and India alone account for half of the country. In addition, Latin American countries including Brazil (12.4%) and Mexico (6.5%) also show high interest in AI companion products. None of the Asian countries mentioned above with significant revenue contributions entered the Top 10 download list, while Pakistan (5.7%), China (4.3%) and Indonesia (3.5%) ranked among the Top 5, Top7 and Top 10 respectively.
AI Companion Category Proportion of Download Contributions from Different Countries| Source: Appfigure
Sea-going products account for most of the country,AI games and pets also come to join in the fun?
According to the Top 10 AI Companion Category Application Revenue List and Download List released by Appfigure from January 2023 to December 2024, a total of 13 products have entered the list, among which “Character AI”,”Talkie”,”PolyBuzz”,”Linky AI”,”Pengu”,”HiWaifu”, and “Genesia” have entered the list twice, reflecting that the above products have balanced performance in terms of user payment and market penetration, and have strong comprehensive competitiveness.
AI Companion Category Downloads and Revenue List| Source: Appfigure
From an experience perspectiveAlthough all positioning is virtual companionship, the services provided by the 13 products are actually quite different. According to the sharing of AI product managers and scholars, AI companionship products can actually be refined intoInteractive content and love companionship are two major directions.Most of the products on the list such as “Character AI” and “Talkie” actually belong to the former. The interactive experience they provide can be regarded as a new form of content consumption. Users enjoy the process of creating stories with different AI characters. To a certain extent, it can be compared to interactive games. We have seen many product forms in this direction before. In terms of innovative gameplay, perhaps only “Royal Romance” needs to be specifically mentioned on the list. This is essentially a card RPG game with the theme of medieval European royalty, which is connected to the Jianghuai system with AI chat function serves as a difference point. In the context of a complete worldview, the unlocking of AI characters is related to the advancement of main tasks, the card drawing system, etc., and extends gameplay such as dating and child cultivation to make the game more realistic.
What is different from interactive content products is the products “Pengu” and “Genesia” that emphasize the one-on-one love companionship experience. We paid attention to this product during the financing of “Pengu” in the middle of last year. For details, see “Is there any game social product that can raise US$5 million this year?” At that time, it was not very related to AI. Nowadays,”Pengu” is positioned as an AI pet. Users can raise a virtual pet named Pengu with relatives and friends and communicate with it. According to its co-founder Fabian Kamberi,”Pengu” is currently the largest AI character application with its own IP in the United States. Data shows that its global average monthly activity in the past three months is about 1.6 million, and more than 40% of its users are from the United States. Similarly,”Genesia” prefers AI partners, with AI providing emotional support, life advice, and assistance in goal tracking as a selling point.
Judging from the country where the product belongs, China developers have the largest number of products on the list, with 9 of the 13 products coming from China, and the remaining products coming from the United States, Germany, Turkey and South Korea. Among overseas products, MiniMax’s “Talkie” and the Job Gang’s “PolyBuzz” are examples; the representative product of American manufacturers is “Character AI”; the AI pet “Pengu” comes from Germany; South Korean manufacturers have unexpectedly run out of the most profitable AI companion product “LoveyDovey” to date. Appfigure data shows that as of December last year, its cumulative revenue has reached US$7.6 million, and even “Character AI” can only match it; Turkish manufacturer Codeway’s “Genesia” also entered the list.
Judging from the launch timeExcept for “Royal Romance”, which will be launched in February 2024, the remaining 13 products will be launched in 2023. What is worth noting is the availability of AI companion applications. Currently,”Talkie”(iOS will be removed from the US on December 14, 2024),”CrushOn”(dual-terminal will be removed from the US on January 17, 2025),”Genesia”(dual-terminal will be removed from the US on October 26, 2024), and Hi.AI (released from the US on February 11, 2025) have all been removed from the shelves in some areas. Coincidentally, the timing was stuck after the disclosure of the suicide of a 14-year-old boy obsessed with a chat robot in Florida, pointing out that the removal may be related to the ensuing platform and industry’s increased requirements for minors and data privacy. The product was ordered to be rectified or taken off the shelves for risk avoidance considerations.
From the perspective of growth methods, the first sea-going products are generally large buyers. The vast amount of big data shows that since its launch,”Talkie” has exceeded 100,000 materials,”Linky AI” has exceeded 50,000, and “PolyBuzz” has exceeded 30,000. On the other hand,”Character AI” has only thousands of materials but is still in the download volume. Staying at Top 1, in part because the latter has been able to achieve natural growth by relying on brand accumulation, social fission and user stickiness of the product itself, without relying on large-scale launch. nbsp;
In addition,”Pengu”, which supports users to raise pets with relatives and friends, and contains intimate social gameplay, has not put too much effort into buying volume. The majority of materials have been captured and released. In addition to its own gameplay design for social disintegration,”Pengu” is also vigorously investing in social media operations. Similar to the strategy of many neighboring countries to make green owls have a sense of existence, the pengu_app TikTok account, which appears in the image of penguandpengulette TikTok, has gained 140,000 fans, and the plot of the cartoon image has reached 270,000 fans to the account penguandpengulette
Pengu_app TikTok account appearing in the image of penguin plush“”| Source: TikTok
The traditional new strategy of inviting friends to receive rewards has been widely used in products such as “Talkie”,”Character AI”, and “PolyBuzz”. The slightly different one is “LoveDovey”.The latter’s institutional goal is more towards promoting life——Not only can old users get rewards by activating the invite code, but one user can also fill in multiple invitation codes. The party filling out the invitation code does not receive a reward, and its motivation is more similar to that of content consumers voting for a favorite work, because the reward is an in-platform token jam used for chat, which attracts many players to share dramatic chat screenshots on social platforms. Increase the exposure of the invitation code (but last week, officials announced that the event was temporarily suspended due to the use of loopholes in some regions to obtain unfair benefits).
“LoveyDovey” shares invitation codes on public platforms| Source: Treads, Plurk
There are different paths between imitation and more imitation
Returning to the product level, the current important direction for AI accompanying application iteration is
AI voice is a major technology that has been given high hopes. The earliest application of this technology in AI companionship was to allow AI to automatically read out AI characters ‘replies, reducing users’ reading burden in long text replies and improving companionship. Both “PolyBuzz” and “HiWaifu” adopted this design; In the advanced version, it is based on this, with the additional function of voice calls for AI characters. Most head-based AI companionship applications such as “Character AI” and “Talkie” already basically use it as standard. Taking “Character AI” as an example, it has currently placed the logo of Character Calls in a prominent position on the home page and chat interface. It not only stimulates users to interact with AI characters in the new mode, but also reflects the importance of the head player. Technology.
“Character AI” places the Character Calls function in a very eye-catching position on both the home page and the chat page
Beyond multimodal,“LoveyDovey” may be a leader in improving the real-life experience from gameplay design.The unique design of this most profitable AI companionship product at present lies in its favorable impression mechanism. There are 5-level relationships between the player and the AI character, ranging from acquaintances, friends, and marriage. Players need to advance step by step by accumulating favorable impression. The AI character’s understanding of the relationship between the two parties will also change accordingly. This design not only sets game goals for the player, but also is more in line with realistic logic. Similar details include a list of friends classified by relationship, and calls from characters that will be received after reaching the level of affinity. This optimization of the experience further tests long text and memory abilities.
“LoveDovey”‘s likability mechanism and character call function
However, among many products, there is also an anomaly. Between realistic and more realistic, it goes directly to real social interaction.
In addition to AI character chatting,”Linky AI” has specially developed a human social section within the platform. In order to adapt to the tone of an AI App, AI has also been integrated into human social networking. Users can freely choose to chat with each other’s AI/real person, use the Boots function to send greetings to 5 human/AI characters who meet the limited requirements, etc.
In the author’s actual measurement, there should be many active users of this function. It was easy to match a British brother working in Japan. He said that he downloaded “Linky AI” on the recommendation of a friend.The original purpose was Dating.From the perspective of such male users,”Linky AI” may be more like the original dating software +AI, and even have the flavor of a paid chat app. Some matched users said they would be asked to pay after 10 rounds of replies. There is not a high degree of overlap between users who feel AI companionship and real social interaction. The direction of the new “Linky AI” feature is more like the previous wave of adding user AIbot to dating apps to help you process messages.
“Linky AI” App Store Poster
The other side of the transformation of “Linky AI” into real people may be the concern that the commercialization of AI companion categories is not high. Even if “LoveDovey” does not have any monthly or annual subscription items, adopts a more cost-controllable single-sentence pricing model, and has achieved cumulative revenue of millions of dollars, it is still crying poor, expressing that the long-term interactive format of the story model is favored by heavy users, and ways to reduce costs will be explored to maintain the current pricing, and the upcoming story pro will be even more expensive.
In-house purchase is not enough, and a major focus of increasing income from overseas products has returned to advertising monetization. According to actual measurement, pop-up advertisements in “PolyBuzz” and “Linky AI” are very frequent. For AI to accompany such a long-term stay, the experience interference is quite serious, but balancing the balance of user experience and commercialization has always been a problem. Probably only “Character AI” backed by a tree can find a little calmness.
