Game Review - Linky AI Chat

Game Review: Linky: Chat with Characters AI by Skywork AI Pte. Ltd.

Score: +5/-6 Update (May-5) FAIL

"Get ready to dive into an AI world compiled by various characters ai, including anime characters. 

With Linky, your digital persona becomes an authentic extension of yourself. Engage in dynamic conversations and interactions that bring your personality, language expressions, and emotional reactions to life in the digital realm."

Linky is far and away the best AI Chat app for those new to AI chat. In a nutshell, it's reasonable and you will clearly know it's pros and cons before you pay for any of it.

UPDATE (May-5): Test Linky thoroughly before paying for anything. Since our original article, the AI has steadily gotten worse and there are a lot more errors in their responses. For example, the AI can insist on referring to you as female even if you have specified that you are male.

IMPORTANT: Read our notes on their subscription plans before subscribing! It's at the bottom of this article.

+1 Unlimited demo.

• +1 This is the most important feature right now and it didn't used to be like this so it's not clear how long this will last. Take the opportunity to try Linky now!
• +1 You can create your own characters, chat with characters with no apparent chat message limit, and even have sexy / sexual / adult chats if you want.
• From the range of user creations you can browse, it's clear that most people are using it for sexy chats. You may not be able to create and share an outright sexual-situation AI, but your chat can go in basically any direction.

+1 Doesn't bombard you with microtransactions or advertising.

• Many other chat programs make you watch ads or paywall you almost right away before your chat even goes anywhere. Linky's unlimited chat lets you get far with a chat, possibly far enough to encounter flawed responses. Then when you actually pay for features, at least nothing was hidden from you and you know what you are getting.
• +0 They offer a primarily different product than other AI chats.
• Instead of buying chat time, you primarily buy mementoes of your chats. As you chat with characters, they will occasionally send you a notification that you've received a picture. This will be a picture of your AI chat partner, plus some blurb of what was happening.
• You do get free currency periodically to collect these mementoes but of course there's the tantalizing option to buy more any time. A subscription gives you more currency each day, as well as more priority for system functions.

+1 UI is simple and straightforward.

• This won't sound like a big deal until you start trying various AI chat apps and realize how convoluted some of them are.
• In comparison, Linky is really straightforward and also easy to get started with: You swipe till you find a character with a scenario that interests you, click on them, and just start chatting.

-1 Search function is still under development and right now it is terrible. But there is an even more important issue:

-1 Every other chatbot profile seems to be "your sexy stepmom" and almost all of them involve some sexual innuendo.

• There's no opt-in, and no way to easily filter it out. Although if you did manage to filter it out, probably there wouldn't be more than a handful of profiles left.
• Outright sexual pictures and chatbot summaries are not allowed, but it feels like everyone is using a suggestive picture and beat-you-over-the-head obtuse sexual innuendo. If you're not an adult, you shouldn't even download this even if you are technically allowed to download it.
• You can however have "normal" conversations. You can probably also get it to do your homework for you or write essays. Sexual content isn't the only content despite the chatbot stories you see.

-1 Of course is the AI isn't perfect, and you should definitely play around with it until you see the AI trip up.

• Sometimes the AI gets confused by the location, situation, and even character. This is very jarring.
• You can give request the AI try a different response, but it doesn't always produce a better or even substantially different one.
• If generating a new response basically doesn't work, you'll have to wipe some or all of the chat and start again.
• The insistence of the AI in some of the details of its responses suggests that at some point the AI may have predetermined the character's background and is sticking to the story.
• -1 Update (2024-Apr-26): The AI and features seem to have become more buggy and stealth changes to what are prohibited terms have confused users recently. What used to work might suddenly no longer work, and what you see in older chatbots might not pass checks now.

+0-0 Generally positive responses and you can end up in bed with the character really fast.

• Chats going in a steamy direction is of course not necessary but it can feel you move to it really fast or if you start getting flirty, the AI is just all over you.
• Some people will probably like the positive outcomes, others might find it goes there too fast and it's hard to slow the AI down.
• For much less sexual chatbots who basically need you to initiate everything, try Poly AI.

-1 Annoying subscription plan. See below for details.

How Linky Subscription Works

We used up our free character creation allotment and had the default free 300 currency in our account before subscribing for one month to Linky.

This is what happened:

• 30 coins per day, you have to log in and Claim them daily.
• Coins are used to buy the collectible Cards. Each Card normally costs 300 coins, so 10 days equals 1 card.
• Each free Gacha draw per week (the Cards you can collect) also have to be Claimed by accessing the app.
• It's not clear if these expire.
• Ability to create more characters:
  
• It says "10 for the first week, 3/week thereafter, maximum 100". This is highly misleading.
• Players start with 5 plus 1 per week. This is without any subscription.
• When you create characters, the bankable amount of 5 is used up first, then the non-cumulative 1 per week.
• We used all this up before subscribing for one month. Upon subscription, our character allotment became 1/7 banked and 2/3 weekly.
• That means we got three this week, but two were in the non-banked weekly amount.
• Recommend you collect all your characters. Make some junk character, set it to Private, and use them later.
• Not even sure how they figure this is 10 for the first week.