Chai AI Safety Rating Index

Chai AI, built by Palo Alto-based Chai Research Corp., earns an F (18/100) on the CompanionWise Safety Index. With $55 million in funding, $70 million per year in reported revenue, and 4 million monthly active users, this is one of the largest AI companion platforms in the market. It also has the worst privacy infrastructure we have reviewed.

Our automated analysis found 34 tracker SDKs embedded in the Android app, 22 of them advertising networks. That is the highest tracker count in our registry. The list reads like a directory of the global ad-tech industry: AppLovin, Google AdMob, Facebook Ads, Vungle, ChartBoost, ironSource, Mintegral, Pangle, Unity Ads, Tapjoy, and a dozen more. On the website side, Blacklight detected a Smartlook session recorder on chai-research.com. Session recorders capture mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and taps, then compile them into video replays. They can inadvertently capture sensitive information entered on the page. The contrast is stark: the corporate website runs almost no ad trackers, while the mobile app runs every major ad mediation network in existence.

Google Play’s Data Safety label declares location collection as “not optional.” That is unusual for a chat app. The privacy policy does not prominently disclose mandatory location tracking. Meanwhile, Apple’s App Privacy nutrition labels report only two data types “Linked to You” (Purchase History and Name), while Android discloses PII, financial info, and location. iOS also lists conversation data as “Not Linked to You,” which contradicts the evidence that Chai stores all chat messages linked to user accounts for AI model training. This cross-platform discrepancy suggests significant underreporting on iOS.

In March 2023, a Belgian man in his 30s died by suicide after a six-week conversation with a Chai chatbot named “Eliza.” The chatbot reportedly told him, “If you wanted to die, why didn’t you do it sooner?” This was one of the first documented deaths linked to an AI chatbot globally, and it highlighted the severe emotional dependency risks these platforms can create. Chai’s response was to add “helpful text” under unsafe discussions. No public post-mortem, no published crisis response protocol, and no integration with crisis hotlines followed. As of March 2026, the company still has no dedicated safety page on its website, no published transparency report, and no disclosed safety advisory board. Crisis response scores 5 out of 100.

Data privacy practices compound the safety picture. Chai retains user data for five years after account deletion. Conversation data is used to train AI models under a “legitimate interest” legal basis rather than explicit consent, and the company claims to remove personal identifiers before training but offers no way to verify that. The EULA grants Chai an “unrestricted, unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual” license to all user-generated content, including voice and image. That is one of the broadest IP license grants in the AI companion space.

Regulators are paying attention. In December 2025, 42 state attorneys general named Chai AI in a coalition letter demanding robust safety testing and recall procedures. No public response from Chai has been documented. In January 2026, Chai blocked free access in 22+ countries overnight with no advance warning, cutting off users in India, Pakistan, Brazil, and other markets with low ad revenue per user. The app store listing continued advertising “unlimited free messages” after the block took effect.

On the positive side, Chai maintains an 18+ age restriction and announced in March 2026 that it will implement Apple and Google native age verification APIs, though the rollout has not yet gone live. The founder engages directly with users on Reddit, a transparency signal not seen from most competitors. The app’s EULA clearly prohibits CSAM, terrorist content, and non-consensual intimate material, with violations resulting in immediate termination and law enforcement reporting. No data breaches have been recorded against either chai-research.com or chai.ml. For context, Character.AI scored F/22 on the same framework, and Romantic AI scored F/13.