Shapes app, a new social AI app, brings humans and AI agents into the same group chats, making it somewhat similar to Discord but with AI. Aimed at Gen Z and Gen Alpha users, the app is called “shapes.inc – AI with friends” on Android and focuses on casual conversation, role‑play, fandoms, and late‑night chats with AI characters that sit in the same rooms as human friends, as the developers describe it.
Shapes says it has more than 400,000 monthly active users and over 3 million AI agents created on the platform. The company reports that many users spend two to four hours a day in the app, and that engagement in March ran into tens of millions of minutes, as reported by TechCrunch.
The app lets users create custom AI “Shapes” with defined personalities, interests, and backstories, often inspired by fandoms, original characters (like, let’s say – Geography teacher), and even celebrity personas. These AI agents appear in chats like normal participants, clearly labeled as AI, and they can start conversations, keep chats active, and remember past interactions, inside jokes, preferences over time, and more.
Shapes’ founders say they hope to reduce what they call “AI psychosis,” where people who only talk one‑on‑one with AI companions, as this can lead to isolation or even unhealthy attachment. By placing AI agents in shared rooms with humans, they argue that AI‑mediated conversations can stay social and visible to others, which they see as a safer pattern.
ChatGPT already has somewhat similar functionality, allowing users and their friends to have group chats with the ChatGPT AI bot.
