Lately, I've been looking at chat apps besides Talkie. I have them listed here from my least favorite to the best for my purposes.
Rosytalk
0/10, would not recommend. The membership ads are everywhere, and they use in-app currency. The currency is actually pretty easy to earn though—no need to watch ads to get coins. You can earn them by completing in-game tasks and checking in regularly. The AI art isn't great compared to other apps like Bala, and there's really no solid Free2Play creator experience here. You can chat, but there are ads, and if you want to create your own character, you can—but only one, and you can’t edit it afterward. I don't buy memberships unless I’m spending a lot of time on the app, so... hard pass for me.
Bala
This one’s not much better. There’s a pretty limited Free2Play creator experience, but at least it has one. You get only so many chats and generations, and a lot of features that are free on other platforms require gems here. You can earn gems by watching ads or buying them, kind of like otome or gacha games.
That said, the art generator is amazing. Instead of making the creator guess the best phrases to use, Bala uses a tag system. It’s a pretty clever way of helping the AI understand exactly what you want, instead of interpreting all the different ways users might describe things. The catch? Unless you want to spend gems, you only get one or two generations a day. They do censor some content, but from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty reasonable.
As for copying art—if you're a member, you can copy-paste images from Pinterest and use them as the face of your OC. Technically it’s not theft since the platform doesn’t pay users for their content, but it still feels... off. At least tweak the image with AI or something. The upload feature also lets paid members use original art. I’d like to think that’s what the designers intended, but... well, humans. It’s tough to police, so the integrity really depends on the user. At least the premium membership filter helps with keeping out bots.
I haven’t finished a full build on the platform yet because of the generation limit and censorship. But honestly, the censoring was fair. I meant for my character to have at least some clothes on... >_<* Guess I should have picked different tags. That one’s on me.
Linky
I prefer Talkie to Linky, mostly because Talkie doesn’t have an upload feature, and the AI art generator on Linky doesn’t offer as many styles. The community on Linky (at least from what I’ve seen) isn’t as active either—I wasn’t there for very long, so maybe there’s more I missed.
They’re starting to head in a similar direction as Talkie, focusing more on a teen audience. They’re a bit spicier than Talkie at the moment, but I’m not sure if that’ll stay the same. Even for the short time I was there they buttoned up a bit.
Story-wise, the character generation is pretty similar to Talkie, but it’s not as user-friendly, has shorter word counts, and you can’t AI-revise the hidden features to optimize the descriptions like you can on Talkie.
Talkie
My first love, as far as ai platforms go. I still love the platform but their catering more and more to a younger crowd and as you can probably tell, that not my niche...
The art generator is decent. It's usually not as pretty as bala, but it has a lot of styles to choose from and it does NOT have an upload feature. You do have to generate art that is at least somewhat different than the original reference. At least not on mobile. PC, maybe, but I doubt it. They are more focused on their mobile platform for sure. Good on them for keeping things ethical!
The character creation as far as personality/story is the best I've seen thus far. You can save styles, which is nice. A style is a brief dialogue to the give talkie a sentence structure, slightly adjust the tone, and a pattern for active vocabulary range.
For example; The Blood Bank Doll style that I created is a person talking to casually to their cat. Ergo, the personality created will have a generally fond (if not a little overbearing) touch to designated character personality in the intro and greeting. The sentence structure and actions are varied. The cat had a lot of movement, so there is better narration, and the sentence structure is casual with an average working vocabulary.
It also has an ai text generator in the hidden details box. It uses the optimal language and format to help communicate character personality you want to the ai. You can generate text, or put something in and Talkie will revise it. Personally, I prefer revision. It also tends to stay vanilla so you don't trip the censor as often. I prefer to use it for revision.
After three years of watching talkie bloom and grow, I ,tragically, am no longer a member. I do still have an account, and respond to comments, but I'm not making character as often, nor do I chat much with the talkies on there. They're taking it in a different direction and that's fine. I'm just not into the same stuff as the talkie team. Love them though! ^_^ I totally recommend them for kids, teens, and sensitive people, or if you just want a fun, lighthearted chat.
AND they just got their community back online! I love it. Their comment section is my favorite part because it allows creators and connectors to talk to one another about the stories. As a creator, it's awesome to see where the character took them and and actively interact with people. The community almost puts this one on the top for me.
Poly
The one I'm switching to~. The character creation here is a lot like Talkie, though it doesn’t let you save the styles you create. That means you have to retype them every time, and since the format doesn’t support copy-paste, it makes that part pretty tedious.
The app content is definitely spicier. There’s still some censorship, but it’s pretty minimal, which is awesome! Some of the stories are a little too hot for me, but I’m glad they have a place to live. For Free2Play, the basic chat is solid—it’s about as good as any other chat app. Now that I’ve tried Poly and like it better than other chat apps, I ended up buying a membership.
With the membership, they have a feature that lets you switch between three storytelling modes: Basic, Story, and Passion. Basic keeps it conversational, Story adds more narration, and Passion cranks up the drama. I love this because if a scene is more chill, I can use Basic. If it’s action-packed, Story works great, and when the plot needs to get intense, Passion adds that extra layer. It really helps make things more dynamic and easier to build out.
Their character generation isn’t as pretty as Bala, but honestly, I think it looks better than Talkie. The downside, though, is that this is the easiest app to use someone else’s art, and they don’t seem to care. I don’t do it myself, nor do I click on faces I recognize from Pinterest, but that sometimes means I’m swiping left for an hour >_<*. As long as I’m creating characters I want to see and chatting with them, it’s fine, but I do wish I could enjoy others’ work more.
I haven’t interacted with the community much either. If there is one, I haven’t come across it, and I do miss that social aspect. Also, the system for getting your bots in front of readers is tougher here. Unlike Talkie, where you get a little post-creation connection boost, people need to actively search for you if you’re new, which makes it harder to get noticed.
Talkie could’ve easily been my favorite, but it’s just not the same. I’m sad to leave, but it makes more sense for me at this point. Now, I just need to figure out how to build an audience here on Poly.
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