Does Disney get your Character.AI chats now?

Does Disney get your Character.AI chats under the current deal?

No. Disney's $20 million bid for Character.AI doesn't include user chats, accounts or the app itself. What Disney is buying is a non-exclusive, perpetual license to the code behind Character.AI's training, safety and serving systems, plus nine patents. The headlines make it sound like a takeover, but Disney is really hiring the team. Character Technologies, the company behind the chatbot, filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware in mid-October. Court filings show that most of its roughly 86 full-time staff had already accepted jobs at Disney. Its former CEO, Karandeep Anand, started as Disney's first-ever chief technology officer on October 2.

The awkward part is everything Disney left behind. The app, the brand, the user accounts, the chat histories and the trained models all stay in the bankruptcy estate. That's the pool of assets the court can sell to pay creditors. Disney is the stalking-horse bidder, which means its offer sets the floor and anyone can try to beat it. Competing bids are open until November 20, and the sale is expected to close in late November or early December. The company's lawyer told the court that, so far, nobody has bid on the user data or the chatbot business. Character.AI has also said it may shut the platform down if no workable bid shows up.

So the honest answer to "does Disney get my chats" is no for now, and nobody knows who gets them later. Here's our view: the unknown buyer is the bigger worry. Disney is a household name with regulators watching its every move. A data broker or a little-known AI lab looking for cheap training data would get far less scrutiny. The chats in question aren't small talk, either. State officials point out that they include mental health disclosures, audio-call content, declared ages and device identifiers. Character.AI reports more than 20 million monthly users, and over two million accounts were registered by people who said they were under 18.

What happens to AI chat data when a company is sold in bankruptcy?

In a bankruptcy sale, user data is usually treated like any other asset. It can be sold to the highest bidder, as long as the court approves and the sale doesn't clearly break the company's own privacy promises. Most privacy policies already include a line saying your data may be transferred in a "merger, acquisition, or bankruptcy." You probably agreed to it without noticing. US bankruptcy law adds one safeguard. If a sale of personal information would go against the privacy policy, the court can appoint a consumer privacy ombudsman to review the deal and suggest conditions. It doesn't block the sale outright, but it can change the terms.

This has happened before. When RadioShack went under in 2015, its customer files turned into a fight between state attorneys general and the buyer. The data was eventually sold, but in a much smaller form and with limits attached. Character.AI is heading the same way. On October 14, a bipartisan group of 40 state attorneys general, led by New York, filed a notice with the court. It lists nine conditions they want attached to any sale. They want limits on using private conversations to train AI without valid consent. They want age checks and protections for minors. And they want every user, past and present, to get a chance to delete their data before anything is sold.

The company has pushed back on part of that. It argued that users aren't creditors, so they aren't owed formal notice, and that emailing about 163 million current and former users would cost too much. Character.AI says its privacy practices haven't changed during the bankruptcy and that exports and deletions still work. That's all reassuring until a new owner arrives with a new privacy policy. The practical lesson is that a privacy policy only protects you while the company that wrote it is still around. When it goes bust, your chats get weighed against what creditors are owed, and you aren't one of those creditors.

How do you export and delete your Character.AI chats right now?

Both options are in your account settings. On the web, click your profile name in the bottom-left corner and open Settings. Then go to Account and choose "Manage Account & Data." You'll see "Export data" and "Delete account" there. In the mobile app, open your profile and tap the settings icon. Export my data and Remove Account sit near the bottom of that screen, and you'll usually confirm a deletion by typing your username. Export first, every time. Deletion is permanent and can't be undone. If you have a paid c.ai+ subscription, cancel it through whoever bills you, because deleting the account doesn't always stop the payments.

Give yourself some time. Reports put data exports at up to three or four weeks, and the bidding deadline is November 20. If you want a copy of your chats before a buyer is chosen, start this week, not the night before. While the export is running, think about whether you really need everything. Most people want a few long story threads or personal conversations, not years of throwaway prompts. Copying the handful of chats you care about into a private document takes ten minutes. It also leaves you with a backup that doesn't depend on a company that's about to change hands.

One point is easy to miss. Deleting your account isn't the same as erasing your data. Deleting removes your characters, chats and activity from what you can see and ends your access. Nothing in the standard flow promises the data is wiped from the company's servers. If you want that, send a formal erasure request through the help center or the company's privacy email, and expect an identity check first. Keep a screenshot of the request and any reply. If a buyer later says it inherited your data, that paper trail shows you asked for deletion before the sale went through.

What should you ask an AI assistant before you hand it your admin?

Before you trust any AI assistant with your life, ask four things. Where does my data live? Who can read it? Is it used to train models? And what happens to it if the company is sold or shuts down? If you can't get clear answers in plain English, treat that as your answer. These questions matter even more for a work assistant than for a chatbot companion. Character.AI users mostly shared stories and feelings. A work assistant collects invoices, client names, contract terms, home addresses and the fact that you meet your accountant every Monday at 9. That's exactly the kind of data a buyer would want.

Go further than the privacy policy. Can you export everything, including any memory the assistant keeps about you, not just your chat log? Can you delete a single note without deleting the whole account? If the company is acquired, will it tell you before your data moves, and will you get a chance to opt out? Who are the subprocessors, and where are their servers? None of these are trick questions. A trustworthy provider can answer them in a few sentences. If a provider dodges them, think twice. Meta's recent change to its commercial terms is another example of how the fine print on AI and business data can shift under you.

Keep a habit, too. Every few months, export what you care about and look at what the assistant knows about you. Most people never do this, and that's why a bankruptcy notice catches them off guard. It's like checking your smoke alarm. It's boring, it takes a few minutes, and you'll be glad you did. If you'd like a longer, step-by-step version, we've written up a checklist for any AI assistant that holds your notes and documents. It also covers what Character.AI users specifically can do before the sale closes. Print it, keep it, and run through it before you sign up for your next AI tool.

How should you judge a WhatsApp assistant like Sonic on the same terms?

Judge Agent Sonic the same way you'd judge Character.AI, because it holds the same kind of personal information. Sonic is an AI assistant that lives inside WhatsApp. You message it like any contact, and there's nothing to install. People use it for one-time and recurring reminders ("Remind me to call the accountant every Monday at 9"), to-dos, notes and a personal memory it keeps over time. They send it PDFs, contracts, invoices and spreadsheets to read. It can also connect to Google Calendar, Sheets and Docs. That makes it useful, and it also means it ends up knowing a lot about your business. Getting things off your plate only works if you trust whoever takes them on.

So ask Sonic the four questions before you hand it your Monday-morning admin. Ask where your reminders, notes and documents are stored, whether any of it is used for training, how to export or delete your memory, and what would happen to your data if the company were ever sold. Ask the team directly before you commit, and don't settle for a vague answer. That's not a knock on Sonic. You should hold every assistant to that standard, including the one we build. Asking these questions is just sensible when a tool knows your client list and your calendar.

Once you're happy with the answers, here's where Sonic is useful. It handles the tasks you keep putting off, inside the app you already open a hundred times a day. Forward an invoice and ask, "Is this the same as last month's?" Send a voice note from the car: "Note that Dana wants the quote by Friday." Weeks later, ask, "What did Dana want?" and get the answer without scrolling. If an assistant that remembers everything so you don't have to sounds good, get access to Sonic here. Leave your details and you'll get Sonic's number and a short onboarding.

Frequently asked questions