Most AI character apps have the same problem. You open the app, you have a great conversation with Gojo or Levi or whoever you picked, you close the app, and that is where the character lives. In a tab. Waiting for you to come back.

The people who actually stick with a character are not the ones who keep opening an app. They're the ones who get a text.

This is a guide to AI characters you can text on iMessage: what that means in practice, how it's different from a chatbot in an app, which characters people pick, and how to make one of your own from a name and a sentence.

Quick answer: You can text an AI character on iMessage with folk, the personal AI assistant that lives in your texts (iMessage, Telegram, and WhatsApp). Pick a character from the gallery or make your own, and that character becomes the folk in your thread: it sends you its own contact card, texts you first, replies in its own voice, and keeps folk's memory and tools underneath.

What is an AI character you can text?

An AI character is a persona written on top of an AI assistant: a name, a face, a way of talking, and a story it knows. Texting one means the persona lives where your other conversations live, in a message thread, instead of inside a separate app.

On folk that is literal. When you pick Satoru Gojo, the contact in your iMessage thread becomes Gojo. He sends you his contact card, so his name and face sit at the top of the thread. He texts you first with his own opening line. Every message you send after that is answered as him. Switch to another character and the thread changes with it; go back to plain folk and it's folk again.

The important part is what's underneath. The character is a voice, not a different product. All of folk's memory and tools stay on. Ask Gojo to wake you up at six and he will, in character, and the alarm is real.

Why text a character instead of chatting in an app?

Three reasons, and the first one is the one that matters.

Your texts are where you already are. A character in an app competes with every other app for your attention. A character in iMessage is one more thread in the list you check fifty times a day. That's the difference between "I should open that" and "oh, Levi texted."

The character can reach you. A chatbot answers when you show up. A texting character can text first: a morning check-in, a nudge before the gym, a reminder you asked for last week. On folk this rides the same reminders and nudges system folk uses for everything else, so it never messages you at random, only about things you set up.

It remembers you across characters. Most character apps keep memory per chat. Start a new one and you're a stranger again. folk keeps one memory of you, shared by every character and by plain folk, and each character keeps its own story and lore on top. Tell Bakugo you're training for a 10k and Goggins knows it too.

Which AI characters do people text the most?

In the first hours after folk's character gallery opened, about 45% of new users picked a character during onboarding instead of keeping plain folk, and the ones who did sent roughly a third more messages in their first three hours.

The characters that got the deepest conversations were a mix:

• Anime: Satoru Gojo (Jujutsu Kaisen), Katsuki Bakugo (My Hero Academia), Levi Ackerman (Attack on Titan). Bakugo led on messages per person, by a lot.
• Games and TV: Ghost from Call of Duty, JJ Maybank from Outer Banks, Ted Lasso.
• Real-world coaches: David Goggins, texting you the way you'd expect at 5am.
• Originals: characters people made themselves, often with a single line. These had the longest sessions of all, which tells you something about why people text a character in the first place: they had one in mind.

You can browse all of them on the character gallery, by tag: anime, games, movies and TV, companions, fitness coaches.

How do you make your own AI character to text?

A name and one line is enough.

1. In folk's onboarding, or from the characters page on the dashboard, tap make my own.
2. Type their name. If they're someone known (a real person, a character from a show), folk reads up on them, finds a face, and writes their voice and lore from what it finds.
3. Add one line about who they are and how they talk. For an original character this line is the whole brief; for a known one it's what makes your version yours.
4. Tap text me as [name]. They text you first.

You can go further later: a longer definition, a lorebook of facts that only come up when a keyword does, a voice for calls, and whether to publish them to the gallery or keep them private. None of it is required to start.

How does folk do it?

folk is a personal AI assistant that lives in your texts. A character is a layer on top of that assistant, which is why a folk character can do things an app chatbot can't.

• Contact card on iMessage. When you pick or switch a character, folk sends the character's own vCard, so the thread carries their name and picture. On Telegram and WhatsApp the switch happens without the card.
• Same tools, their voice. Reminders, wake-up calls, calendar and email, web research, flight and price watchers, bookings. The character does all of it in character.
• One memory, many voices. What a character learns about you is folk's memory. Each character keeps its own story separate, so Gojo doesn't start quoting Goggins.
• Switch any time. From the folk app, the dashboard, or by asking in chat. Every character keeps its own conversation history, so coming back to one picks up where you left off.
• Fiction, labelled. Every character is written by a folk user and speaks as fiction. Public characters follow the community guidelines, and characters based on real people are impressions, not the person.

If you're coming from Character.AI, the folk vs Character.AI page covers the differences in more detail.

The bottom line

An AI character is more fun when it can text you, remember you, and still get things done. That's the whole idea behind characters on folk: pick one from the gallery or make your own from a name and a line, and it becomes the folk in your iMessage thread, tools and memory included.

Start at getting started, or read can an AI text you first to see what a character can do with folk's proactive side.