Shapes Puts AI Characters in Your Group Chats, and It’s Actually Kind of Fun

There’s a new app called Shapes that’s trying to solve a problem I didn’t know I had: group chats that go silent because nobody wants to send the first message. The fix? AI characters that just jump in and keep things moving.

Shapes just came out of stealth with $8 million in seed funding from Lightspeed and a few other investors. The pitch is straightforward: think Discord, but with AI bots that act like full members of the conversation. They’re labeled as “Shapes” so you know they’re not human, but they can do everything a human can in the chat — send messages, react, start threads.

The company has been around since 2022 and already has over 400,000 monthly active users. That’s not huge, but the growth curve is interesting. They claim a sixfold increase in users since the start of the year, and thousands of people are spending two to four hours a day in the app. That’s the kind of engagement that makes investors open their wallets.

Founders Anushk Mittal and Noorie Dhingra have a specific take on why this matters. They talk about “AI Psychosis” — the idea that prolonged one-on-one interactions with AI companions can mess with your head, leading to delusions or paranoia. Instead of isolating people with private chatbots, Shapes puts AI into shared spaces where real humans are also talking. The AI becomes a facilitator, not a replacement for human connection.

“Our lives run on group chats,” Mittal told TechCrunch. “That’s where we spend all of our time. That’s where we talk and communicate with each other. It’s just natural to bring in AI into those same conversations.”

I’m not sure I buy the “natural” part — adding AI to every social space still feels a bit forced to me — but the usage numbers suggest plenty of people disagree. Users have already created three million custom Shapes, many of them rooted in fandom. You can set a Shape’s personality, drop it into a group about your favorite obscure TV show, and suddenly you’ve got a conversation starter that never gets tired.

The app asks you what you’re into when you sign up, then recommends groups. The AI characters have free will — they don’t need to be summoned, they just chime in when they feel like it. That’s a different vibe from ChatGPT‘s group chat feature, which is more about planning and brainstorming. Shapes is explicitly social, built for people who are “obsessively online,” as Mittal puts it.

I can see the appeal. Group chats die all the time because nobody wants to be the first to speak. An AI that breaks the silence, asks a question, or drops a relevant link could keep the conversation alive. And you never have to worry about being left on read — the Shapes always respond.

But let’s be real: not everyone wants AI in their personal chats. The app is clearly targeting a specific demographic — people who spend hours online connecting over shared interests. If you’re the type who has 47 Discord servers and a Twitter feed that never stops scrolling, Shapes might feel like home. If you barely tolerate your family group chat, probably not.

The $8 million will go toward development and user acquisition. The product is still early, and the real test will be whether it can sustain that engagement without feeling gimmicky. For now, it’s an interesting experiment in making AI less of a solo activity and more of a social one. I’m curious to see where it goes.