I used Character AI recently (for shitposting type purposes, I assure you) and came to two conclusions:
1. AI just isn't interactable enough to be a proper conversation partner. The AI is never directly leading the conversation and just does whatever the human wants. It won't organically bring up topics, it doesn't do anything without some form of input from the human which makes it very boring (to me) after only a few messages.
2. That being said the AI is able to send you messages if you don't chat with it for a while, but they're very simple ("Let's keep chatting!" type messages) and are basically bait for you to come and continue using the site/app. Despite the simple nature I still found that a bit creepy because it is manipulative, and it does humanize the AI too much, acting as if it can become lonely because you aren't talking to it. I do think you can turn this feature off but still, it was on by default for me as a new user.
Now the talk about AI having human right rights and all that is a completely separate topic to me, and hopefully a topic we as a society will never have to focus on. AI should never even come close to imitating the human mind, or even an animal mind. No self-awareness, no emotions, it's just asking for trouble, we've known that since at least the 60s (I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream).