News
The news column
Daily reporting on the AI companion industry. Model changes, app drama, lawsuits, the regulatory backdrop, the things vendors will not put in their press releases.
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June 8, 2026
Janitor AI turns on age verification for Brazil and Australia
Users connecting from Brazil or Australia now have to clear a one-time age check through k-ID before they can chat. Here is what triggered it and how the verification works.
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June 7, 2026
Kindroid rebuilds its media stack: Atelier selfies land on top of a full video pipeline
Kindroid's new Atelier engine maps selfies directly from your avatar photo. It caps a spring of multimodal upgrades: 20-second V3 videos and live video calls.
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June 6, 2026
Character.AI removes nearly all chat styles, and Soft Launch goes paid
Free Character.AI users are down to one model. PipSqueak 2 is the new default, the legacy chat styles are gone, and Soft Launch is back behind the c.ai+ paywall.
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May 3, 2026
Welcome to The Companion Report's news column
What this column will and will not be, who is going to write it, and what to expect from the cadence.
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Sourcing policy: every news item links to a primary source where one exists. Where we can only point at secondary coverage, we say so.