Introduction: Spur Your Creativity With a Personalized AI Writing Assistant: Creating an AI Writing Helper With Character.AI

Creative writing can be a demanding task, one that requires authors to have a well of ideas and creative stories constantly flowing. At some point, we all will encounter a wall, and run a bit dry with ideas for stories or how to develop stories we have begun. I have struggled to put words down on the page many times. This writer’s block can be a struggle to overcome, but with recent AI developments, you no longer must fight on your own. I have found that one of the best ways to overcome a block is through AI assistance. Through Character.AI, a website that allows you to create an AI helper or character for a variety of needs, you can set up a friendly helper bot that can assist you with your writing. Whether you need writing prompts, help with development, checking your grammar or sentences, or anything else, this tutorial will teach you how to set up a basic AI capable of assisting you with your writing and give you the tools and knowledge to customize it to your specific needs even further. 

Supplies

  • A device that can connect to the internet (phone, laptop)
  • Internet access
  • Character.AI account

Step 1: Go to Character.AI

Load the Character.AI website. You may have to wait in a queue to access the website, as it encounters heavy traffic.

Step 2: Create Character

Click on create, then create character on the left bar and create an account if you are prompted to.

Step 3: Name Your Helper

Enter a name in the name field. You can simply name it "AI Writing Assistant", or you can give it a more personal name if you would like.

Step 4: Set Greeting Phrase

Write a greeting phrase for your bot. This is what the bot will say when beginning a conversation with you, and it will help define their personality. You can use the greeting provided in the image, or you can make a greeting in your own words that be more specific to the type of writing assistance or genre you are seeking. The key element is to make the greeting include the bot's goal.

Step 5: Set Visibility and Avatar

Set your visibility to private. If you would like to make your helper public, you can go back and change this later. For now, to prevent others from developing your bot's personality, choose private. Then, click on "Choose File" to upload an avatar for your AI. Click on create and chat in the bottom right once you complete these actions.

Step 6: Write Short and Long Descriptions

Click on the three dots in the top right corner to open the menu, and click on "View Character Settings". Input both a short description and a long description. The short description should be just a few words that define the personality of the bot. The long one should be written in the AI's POV and have a few sentences to a paragraph of self description including personality and goals of the bot. You can use the example ones from the images, or you can write your own if you have more specific goals for your assistant.

Step 7: Select Categories

At the very least, select "English", "Writing", and "Helpers". If you are interested in specific genres or topics, you can add those as well. For example, if you want help specifically with fantasy writing, you might add "Fantasy" as a category.

Step 8: Chat With the AI

Click save in the bottom right corner of the settings, then click the box on the top left of the page containing the picture and name of your AI. Then, just chat with your AI! This will definite the personality of your bot further. Try asking questions and getting responses like the ones in the image. Ask for prompts or writing help, and have it develop ideas. The more you do this, the more helpful the bot will become and the more intelligent its answers will get! For now, try just getting a few questions and responses.

Step 9: Use Definition in Settings

Click on "View Character Settings" again and then scroll down to the definition field. Click on insert chat. This will allow you to chat with your bot again, but in an example field where it will remember your questions and its responses in order to heavily define personality. If you are not satisfied with responses here, click the arrow on the right to get a different response. Once you get questions and responses that you feel are what you want from your bot, click "Next" in the top right.

Step 10: Continue to Chat With the AI!

After definition, you should return to the chat and continue having a conversation with your bot. Then, you are finished! If you continue chatting, and balance that with also inputting example messages in definition, your bot will have a clearly defined personality that you helped raise! The more you chat, the more advanced it will become. Enjoy your new personal AI assistant!