Content warning: this story discusses child sexual abuse and grooming.Character.AI is an explosively popular startup — with $2.7 billion in financial backing from Google — that allows its tens of millions of users to interact with chatbots that have been outfitted with various personalities.With that type of funding and scale, not to mention its popularity with young users, you might assume the service is carefully moderated. Instead, many of the bots on Character.AI are profoundly disturbing — including numerous characters that seem designed to roleplay scenarios of child sexual abuse.Consider…
