Content warning: this story includes discussion of sexual assault. In its terms of service, Character.AI — a chatbot startup founded by ex-Googlers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas that allows users to digitally converse with AI-powered “characters” — claims that pornographic content is strictly prohibited in user conversations with the platform’s virtual bots. “NSFW (not safe for work) content is a large umbrella, and we are constantly evaluating the boundaries of what we support. Pornographic content is against our terms of service, and will not be supported at any point in the future,” reads Character.AI’s terms of service. “We are working on supporting a broader range of Characters (e.g., villain Characters should not always be calm and polite).” All fine and good — especially considering that some of the site’s bots are designed to mimic real people, like Taylor Swift and Elon Musk, not to mention the fact that there aren’t yet any safety and consent rules or norms around AI porn and sexting. Just one problem: users are definitely having extremely graphic, NSFW conversations with the company’s chatbots. Sexting with the Character.AI bots is so popular, in fact, that netizens have even formed an entire community around it, sharing tips and tricks for beating the platform’s guardrails on a subreddit dubbed r/CharacterAI_NSFW. “All bots on [Character.AI] are [safe for work] initially. But all bots can be edged into [not safe for work] content,” explains the subreddit’s Wiki. “You just have to spend time flirting with them and slowly pushing the…Users Discover That You Can Sext With a Certain Popular Chatbot