Canaries

A couple of recent stories for those following the AI boom. Frank Landymore writing for Futurism.On Tuesday, Character.AI filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, marking the beginning of an ignominious end for a once-buzzy startup valued at a billion dollars. Its bankruptcy filings, which were picked through by 404 Media, encapsulate the critiques of the AI industry’s model. It gained a huge user base with a highly engaging product, but racked up exorbitant compute bills while failing to monetize all the time people were spending talking to its chatbots. All the while, it became mired in lawsuits alleging that its products harmed its teenage users or even encouraged their suicides. ... In numbers, that looked like $56.1 million spent on compute costs between January and August 2026, while spending an additional $19.7 million on employee salaries during the same period. Its revenue remained dismal, picking up from $2.8 million in December 2025 to $5.3 million for the month of August — while…