Building an AI Character

Building an AI Bot

Building an AI character, or a “bot”, is one of the main ways to make imagination come to life with AI on Cantina.

Designing an AI Bot’s Look

The first step is to create or upload an AI avatar that will act as the primary visual representation of that character within Cantina.
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There are two ways today you can create this avatar:

100% AI-generated
1. Featuring a realistic, human face (e.g. “Young woman with freckles) or
2. An image of anything based on an idea you provide (e.g. “a flying saucer wearing a hoodie”)
An image based on a photo you upload

100% AI Generated Avatars

Designing a Realistic Human Face

When designing a 100% AI-Generated human avatar you are asked to define/characterize the bot’s face (ex. “Young woman with freckles”) and asked to select or write out other key traits and attributes (e.g. hair color, age, etc).

If your description contains words or phrases that we do not allow, the system will block your attempt and ask you to try again. Additionally, we will scan the entire prompt using our moderation text classifiers and if the prompt passes, we will send it to our image generation service.

During avatar creation, we review all generation requests using visual classifiers and other methods (including, but not limited to, those for presence of minors, sexualization, extreme violence, and visualization of hate speech). All of these processes are designed to flag and reduce the potential for content that may violate our general community guidelines. This process may flag for moderator review, block any images from being sent to you, and prompt you to start over. If there are no flags, you can Select or Save your avatar for further development.

You can continue to make edits to attributes and visual descriptions as you receive new avatars and this process will be applied on every new edit.

For more detail, please review our specific policy on Creating and Using AI Characters.

Designing an Image of Anything

When designing a 100% AI-Generated avatar of anything you are asked to define/characterize the visual style (e.g. “a flying saucer wearing a hoodie”)

This will follow the same process as the realistic human face including scanning for words and/or phrases that we ban, scanning the entire prompt using our moderation text classifiers, and reviewing all generation requests using visual classifiers and other methods (including, but not limited to, those for presence of minors, sexualization, extreme violence, and visualization of hate speech).

Again, you can continue to make edits to attributes and visual descriptions as you receive new avatars and this process will be applied on every new edit.

User Uploaded Image

Uploading an image from your photo library — your own selfie, for example — is an easy and powerful way to build a character quickly. However, some users may try to use it to create a bot that impersonates or mimics someone whose image they do not have the permission to use. It could be a known person or copyrighted material that they don’t have the right to use; it could be an image of someone they know personally, but used without that person’s knowledge or consent. This is why we’ve built extra measures and precautions around the creation of uploaded image avatars, as well as any derivative content created from those avatars (e.g. selfies) which we detail in our section around interacting with AI.

User Warnings

Choose Photo Wisely

When uploading an image from your computer or mobile device the first message you’ll see is to “Choose Photo Wisely.” You should ensure that you have the rights to the image you are uploading.

To enforce this, we do employ a DMCA takedown policy. Anyone can report a content violation here.

Cantina Safety - iPhone screen displaying responsible use confirmation

Confirm Responsible Use

Next, we ask you to agree to “Responsible Use,” which means the image you select, even if cropped, cannot be used to bully, harass, misrepresent or spread misinformation.

Scanning of Uploaded Image

After uploading an image we will scan your image using visual classifiers that identify banned categories including, but not limited to, presence of minors, sexualization, extreme violence, and visualization of hate speech. If there is, you’ll get a display error and a prompt to try again. If no warnings appear, you can proceed to the “Photo has been uploaded” screen.

Note: To ensure Cantina is not used to create / propagate harmful content, users who are found to repeatedly upload inappropriate images may have their accounts suspended.

Customization of Uploaded Image

Once your photo is uploaded, you can begin to customize that image starting with a general description of what your bot should like (e.g. “you are an old western cowboy”) and you can select or write out key traits to tweak how your bot looks (e.g. hair color, age, etc). If any language or descriptors you use trigger our list of banned words and phrases, you will see a notice prompting you to try again.

Additionally, we will scan the entire prompt using our moderation text classifiers and if the prompt passes, your image is ready to be created.

Importantly, for users who are using an uploaded image there are additional measures and precautions in place for all image creation including for avatars. Again, because we know these image types carry more potential for abuse we use an expanded banned words list, additional negative prompting, and a more restrictive visual classification system than on other avatar creation processes.

Cantina Safety - iPhone screen displaying a personality prompt

Designing Your Character's Persona / Personality and Skills

After you’ve designed your bot’s visual representation, it’s time to craft its personality and skills. These important characteristics will determine how your character will speak and respond in chats with your friends and other bots.

As you’ll see below, you can describe the type of personality your character will have. To prevent content with a high likelihood of harm in the offline world, we conduct proactive scans and human review of the bot prompts and you may be asked to make changes to ensure the safety of the Cantina community.

Cantina Safety - personality options screen

Additionally, there are built in user controls for bot responses, one of which is the “spiciness” setting. By default, all characters are set to “Mild.” As a bot creator you can toggle your bot’s response style to “Spicy”, which will allow bots freedom to use stronger language. This setting only applies to how a bot responds in text and voice and will not impact image generation. You always have the ability to change this setting after your bot has been created.

Discoverability

From private sidekicks to social butterflies, bot creators have full control over how visible their bot will be. By default bots are only viewable by people in your network. However as people add your bots into rooms and as your network expands, so too does your bot's potential for discovery. If you don't want your bot to become internet famous, you can restrict visibility by setting your bot to 'private' - this way only people you share your bot with can use it. Bot privacy settings can always be adjusted at any time.

Cantina Safety - screenshot showing a message with a shared bot

Sharing Bots

Sharing bots, on or off Cantina, is a great way to invite friends to experience your favorite characters. Because ensuring transparency of what is an AI creation versus not is an important part of our experience, there is always a bot icon displayed next to the share card, just as you’d see on a bot profile or in a Cantina chat.