Editorial policy

The accountability page. What this site does editorially, what it refuses to do, and the standards a reader is entitled to hold it to.

Independence

Editorial output is produced independently of Character Technologies and every other platform mentioned in the main Character AI guide. No platform reviews its own coverage before publication, receives edits in advance, or holds veto rights. That includes the competitor platforms named in the alternatives comparison. The word independence is not decorative here — it is the working constraint that shapes how this site operates day to day.

Affiliate revenue in plain language

The site earns affiliate revenue. Some outbound CTAs open Character AI or an alternative platform through an affiliate link. When a reader signs up or subscribes after clicking, the site may receive a small commission from the destination platform, at no additional cost to the reader.

Affiliate revenue is not allowed to influence any of the following:

• Which platforms appear in a comparison table. Selection is based on relevance to the reader's likely question, not on affiliate revenue.
• What rank they occupy in that table. Order follows fit, price, and what direct testing surfaced.
• Whether a critical claim gets softened. If a platform is worse at X, the guide says so.
• Whether an alternative gets omitted because it competes with a high-earning partner. Every relevant alternative gets named, whether or not there is a commission attached.

Sources referenced without any affiliate arrangement — for reader audit — include the Common Sense Media research cited in the main guide, the MIT Media Lab study on companion chatbot use, and Stanford Medicine's Brainstorm Lab risk assessment. Those receive the same editorial treatment as any affiliate-linked platform.

Sponsored content policy

None. This site does not accept sponsored posts, paid product placements, native advertising slots, or guest posts from platforms it covers. If that ever changes, the change will be labelled and disclosed on this page before any sponsored content is published.

Corrections and the correction log

Confirmed factual corrections are handled openly. Three things happen when an error is verified: the affected page is edited, the schema dateModified is updated, and a line is added to the log below. Prose polish and typo fixes are not logged; substantive factual changes are.

Correction log

• No entries yet. The first substantive correction will be logged here with date, page and nature of the change.

Sourcing standards

Every material claim on the main Character AI guide is traceable to one of four categories: direct product testing, an official platform source, published third-party research, or a documented community source. Where a claim rests on inference from primary sources, the reasoning is shown rather than hidden behind vague attribution. The weighting between source types is documented on the methodology page.

Use of AI in the editorial process

Large language models are used at the research and summarisation stage — compressing long primary sources or transcripts — never as the final drafter of published prose. Every sentence on the main guide is written or extensively rewritten by a human editor. The reason is not aesthetic: LLMs hallucinate specifics (dates, prices, quotes) at rates that fail this site's sourcing standards, so any output that reaches the reader must pass the fact-check bar.

Handling of research citations

Where the main guide cites third-party research (MIT Media Lab, Common Sense Media, Stanford Medicine's Brainstorm Lab), citations are direct: publication name, sample size where available, and a hyperlink to the primary source. Research is never paraphrased into implying a finding it did not make. If a finding is qualified in the source, the qualification travels with it into the guide.

Reader rights

Readers can expect: an accurate publication date on every page, a visible author byline linking to the editor's profile, a correction pathway, an affiliate disclosure, and the identity of the editor responsible. The methodology page covers the operational side of these rights; this page covers the promises side.

Contacting the editor

Editorial matters — corrections, disagreements with a specific claim, or press queries — go directly to the editor via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/melissablake1. Response window is seven working days.

Last reviewed: July 11, 2026 · by Melissa Blake