Chinese-owned Character.ai rival vanishes from US App Store

Talkie, a popular AI companion app developed by Shanghai start-up MiniMax, has been removed from Apple’s store in the US

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Talkie, a chatbot app developed by Chinese start-up MiniMax, allows users to converse with AI characters. Photo: Handout

Published: 9:00pm, 20 Dec 2024

Talkie, the popular personalised artificial intelligence (AI) app developed by Chinese start-up MiniMax, has been removed from Apple’s US App Store due to unspecified “technical reasons”.

Talkie has been unavailable in the US App Store for about six days. However, Talkie remains downloadable on Google Play, where the app was last updated on Thursday. Users in the US who previously downloaded Talkie from Apple’s store can still access the app.

Talkie’s official TikTok account, which has 29,800 followers, has not published any updates this week after previously posting daily. In response to a series of user inquiries regarding its removal from the App Store, Talkie attributed the situation to “technical reasons”.

“We will get it fixed soon for you,” the team said, without providing a clear timeline for when the app would become available again. Shanghai-based MiniMax declined to comment on Friday.

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Launched in June 2023, Talkie allows users to create and converse with personalised virtual characters through generative AI technology. It was the fourth-most downloaded app in the US in the first half of 2024, surpassing Google-backed rival Character.ai, which ranked 10th, according to data research firm Sensor Tower.

Globally, Talkie recorded 17 million downloads in the first eight months of the year, trailing Character.ai with nearly 19 million downloads, according to a Sensor Tower report in September. Talkie’s monthly active users reached 11 million in July, with over half living in the US.