Sorry, fandoms: it sounds like your favorite Character.AI bots aren’t coming back. The embattled AI companion company Character.AI confirmed to Futurism that it removed a large number of characters from its platform, citing its adherence to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) and copyright law, but failing to say whether the deletions were proactive or in response to requests from the holders of the characters’ intellectual property rights. As we reported yesterday, Character.AI took to social media in droves this week to decry the deletion of chatbots based on characters from the beloved “Harry Potter” series. When we dug deeper, we noticed that other chatbots stemming from Warner Bros. Discovery-held film rights had disappeared, too: characters from the HBO hit “Game of Thrones,” the DC Universe, and even “Looney Tunes” cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck have been vaporized from the platform. Many of the removed AI bots once raked in thousands — and in some cases, millions — of user chats. We asked Character.AI about the Potterverse erasure, and whether Warner Bros. Discovery had requested the removal of AI chatbot characters based on copyrighted characters. It didn’t respond directly to the latter question, but confirmed in an emailed statement via a crisis PR firm that a “group of characters” was recently removed after they were deemed “violative” to copyright law or the company’s policies: We conduct proactive detection and moderation of user-created Characters, including using industry-standard and custom blocklists that are regularly updated. We proactively, and in response to…Character.AI Confirms Mass Deletion of Fandom Characters, Says They're Not Coming Back