How to Back Up and Move Your Character.AI Characters

TL;DR: Request your official Character.AI data export today (it takes 3 to 4 weeks to arrive), copy every character you created into a text file using the template below, and save the chats you care about as PDFs. Then rebuild your characters on a platform where you own them. The whole process takes about 10 minutes per character.

Character.AI filed for bankruptcy and its assets are being auctioned off. The app is still online, but nobody has promised to keep your characters or chats after the sale. I'd treat this week as the time to back up, not December.

I'll walk you through two parts:

1. Backing up your chats and characters from Character.AI.
2. Moving your characters to Neocortex, field by field, so they keep their personality.

Part 1: How to back up your Character.AI data

Step 1: Request the official data export

Character.AI has a built-in export for your account data (official help article):

• On the website: Profile → Profile Settings → Account → Manage Account & Data → Export Data.
• In the mobile app: Profile → Settings icon → Legal & Privacy → Export Data.

A few things to know:

• It takes 3 to 4 weeks. Character.AI prepares the file in the background and emails a download link to the address on your account.
• The link works for 7 days. Download it as soon as the email arrives.
• It covers your whole account. You can't pick one chat, which makes it good as a full backup but clumsy for finding one conversation.

Start this step first, because it takes the longest.

Step 2: Copy each character's definition by hand

Character.AI doesn't say exactly what the export contains, and it isn't a character file you can load somewhere else. So for every character you created, open its edit page and copy each field into a text file. Here's a template you can copy:

=== CHARACTER BACKUP ===
Name:
Tagline:
Description:
Greeting (and any alternate greetings):
Definition:
Voice (name, or keep your original voice clip):
Avatar: (save the image file separately)
Tags and visibility:

=== NOTES TO SELF ===
What makes this character "them":
Phrases they always use:
Things they never do:

Save one file per character, and save the avatar image next to it. The Definition field is the most important one. It can hold up to 32,000 characters of example dialogue and background, and it's what gives the character its voice.

Step 3: Save the chats you care about

For important conversations, don't rely on the export alone:

1. Open the chat and scroll all the way up so every message loads.
2. On desktop, select all (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A), copy, and paste into a document.
3. Or press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on Mac) and choose Save as PDF to keep the layout.

Step 4: Skip the sketchy tools

You'll find browser extensions and scripts that promise to dump everything at once. Some may work, but they need access to your account and may break Character.AI's terms. The official export plus manual copies is the safe route.

Part 2: How to move your characters to Neocortex

Neocortex is a platform for building AI characters that you own. Under our Terms of Service, what you create belongs to you, and you can export any character as a file at any time. It's also where game developers build talking NPCs, so your character can later live inside a game or app too.

One honest heads-up before you start: Neocortex is a creator tool, not a social app. You build characters in a visual editor instead of browsing a feed of other people's bots, and it works best on a desktop browser.

Step 5: Create your character

Sign up for free, go to Characters, and create a new character. Name it after your Character.AI character.

Each character is built from nodes. Think of them as the sections of a character sheet, connected together on a canvas.

Step 6: Map your Character.AI fields to Neocortex

Use this table with the backup file from Step 2:

If your character's core lives in the Definition instead: write a three-sentence background. Who they are ("A retired starship pilot turned tavern owner"), what drives them ("hides a debt to a smuggling ring and trusts no one in uniform"), and how they talk ("dry humor, short sentences, calls everyone 'kid'"). Put the rest of the detail in the knowledge file.

Step 7: Test and tune in the editor

Open the chat panel in the editor and talk to your character. The free plan includes a daily allowance of test messages, so you can tune without spending credits.

If something feels off:

• Too generic? Add more of the original example dialogues to the knowledge file.
• Wanders off topic? In the Result node, set the context mode to Strict or Relevant.
• Replies too long or too short? Change the response length in the Result node.

Step 8: Share it or take it further

Click Share to get a public link. Anyone can open it and chat with your character without an account, which makes it easy to show friends.

And if you want to go beyond chatting, you can give your character a cloned voice, put it in a group chat with up to 6 of your characters, or call it from a Discord bot, website, or game through our API. I cover all of that in make your own AI character with voice and an API.

Where else could you go?

Neocortex is the right fit if you create characters and want to own them. If you mostly chatted with other people's bots or want a phone-first companion app, other options may suit you better. I compared them honestly in the best Character.AI alternative in 2026.

Neocortex is not affiliated with Character.AI or Character Technologies, Inc. Character.AI menu names may change; check its help center for the latest export steps.

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