How to Export Your Character.AI Chats and Data Before the Bankruptcy Sale

You request a data export from your account settings, and Character.AI emails you a download link when the file is ready. The steps below come from Character.AI's own help article "How do I download my data?", checked on October 24, 2026.

On the website (character.ai):

1. Go to your Profile.

2. Click Profile Settings.

3. Click Account.

4. Click Manage Account & Data.

5. Click Export Data. A pop-up confirms that an email with a download link will follow.

On the iPhone or Android app:

1. Open your Profile.

2. Tap the Settings icon.

3. Tap Legal & Privacy.

4. Tap Export Data. A "Success" banner appears once the request is in.

The link goes to the email address on your account, and it stays valid for 7 days from the moment the email is sent. Character.AI's help article says plainly that the export "may take 3-4 weeks to complete", so the button is the easy part and the wait is the real problem.

Character.AI quotes 3 to 4 weeks, and the bankruptcy calendar is shorter than most people think. Under the sale rules Character.AI asked the court to approve, bids are due November 20, an auction would run November 23, the sale hearing is set for November 24 and the deal must close by December 17, 2026. The court hears those proposed rules on October 30 at 10 a.m. Eastern, so the dates can still move.

Here is the arithmetic, using the company's own 3 to 4 week window and 7 day link life. This is an example built from those published figures, not a promise from Character.AI.

The verdict is simple: request now. A request made in mid-November risks arriving after control of the company has changed hands, and nothing in the court filings says the export button survives a sale. Do not wait for Character.AI to warn you either. The company told the court that emailing its roughly 163 million current and past users would cost too much, so notices go out through its blog, the claims agent's website and the app itself.

Character.AI does not publish a list of what the export contains, so treat it as a copy of your account data and chat history and check it the day it arrives. The help article tags the feature under "data privacy" and "GDPR", which points to a legal data-access copy rather than a polished chat reader. Expect a download you open on a computer, not a neat archive inside the app.

Two things you should not assume are inside it. First, the full definitions of characters you built: Character.AI's help center has no article for exporting a character definition, so copy those yourself (see below). Second, anything that lives on other people's accounts, such as their chats with your public characters.

When the email arrives, download the file the same day, open it to confirm your chats are there, and save two copies in different places (your computer plus a cloud drive or USB stick). The 7 day link is unforgiving, and you do not want to discover a broken download on day eight.

Most missing exports are a timing problem or an inbox problem, not a failed request. Work through this list before you request again.

• It has been less than four weeks. Character.AI's own estimate is 3 to 4 weeks, so a request from mid-October is not late yet.

• It went to a different inbox. The link goes to the email on your account. If you signed in with Google, check that Gmail. If you signed in with Apple and chose "Hide My Email", the message goes to an Apple relay address that forwards to your Apple ID email.

• It is in spam or Promotions. Search every folder for "character.ai" and for "export".

• The link expired. Links last 7 days from sending. If yours has lapsed, request a new export from the same menu and download the next one the moment it lands.

• You no longer control that email. Character.AI's help center says data, characters and chat histories cannot be transferred between accounts, so fix the email on the account you have rather than opening a new one.

If four weeks have passed and nothing has arrived anywhere, contact Character.AI support through its help center and keep the date you made the request. During a bankruptcy, a dated paper trail is worth having.

Copy them by hand, because there is no official character export. Open each character you made, open its edit screen and copy the name, greeting, description, definition and example dialogue into a document. Do it for private characters first, since nobody else will ever have a copy of those.

Public characters come with a catch you should know about. Character.AI's privacy policy says that if a character you created has been made available to other users, the company may keep that character's characteristics and keep it active on the service even after you delete your data and your account. In other words, your public characters may stay on the platform, and pass to whoever buys it, whether you stay or go.

For your favorite conversations, save a manual copy now as well. Copy and paste the chats that matter most into a document, or take screenshots of the best exchanges. It is tedious, but it is the only backup that does not depend on an email arriving in time.

Yes, but it is unofficial, so use it with care. CAI Tools, a browser extension by developer Muhammed İrşat listed on Firefox Add-ons and the Chrome Web Store, lets you save chats to your computer to read offline, download chats in formats used by Oobabooga, Tavern and SillyTavern, and download characters as JSON files or PNG character cards. Its listing notes that some features may require payment.

The tradeoff is trust. An extension that reads your chats can read your account, so install only from the official store listing, check recent reviews, and remove it once your backup is done. Character.AI does not endorse it, and site changes can break it at any time. For most people the right order is: request the official export first, then use a tool for the chats you cannot afford to lose.

In much of the world, yes, and the law gives you a deadline the Export Data button does not. Character.AI's own privacy policy lists the right to access the personal information it holds about you, "including in a portable and/or machine-readable format", and the right to have it transferred to another provider, depending on where you live. Formal requests go to privacy@character.ai or the request form at support.character.ai, and the company says it will verify your identity before it answers.

Use both routes. Press Export Data for the file, and if you live somewhere on this list, send a short formal request as well, so a legal clock starts running alongside the company's own 3 to 4 week estimate. A request that cites the law is harder to lose in a bankruptcy than a button press.

Send it by email from the address on your Character.AI account, so the company can match it to you quickly. Keep it short, specific and dated.

1. Email privacy@character.ai from your account email, or use the request form at support.character.ai.

2. Use a clear subject line, such as "Data access and portability request".

3. Name the law that applies where you live (for example the GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, Brazil's LGPD or Indonesia's PDP Law).

4. Ask for everything: your account details, every chat, the characters you created, and any data used to train or tune models, in a machine-readable format.

5. Give your username and the date you pressed Export Data, and ask them to confirm receipt.

6. Save a copy of the email and the date you sent it.

Here is wording you can adapt: "I am a Character.AI user and I request a copy of all personal data you hold about me under [law], including my chat history and the characters I created, in a portable, machine-readable format. My username is [username]. Please confirm receipt and the date you will respond." Keep it polite and factual. You do not need a lawyer to send it.

They stay with Character.AI and follow the company through the sale. Disney's US$20 million deal is a non-exclusive technology license that excludes user data, chats, the app and the brand, so those assets remain with the bankrupt company for other bidders or a wind-down. No filing so far says whether a buyer will receive user chats, and no consumer privacy ombudsman had been appointed as of late October 2026. Read our full breakdown of the case on Is Character.AI shutting down?.

The states are watching this exact question. On October 14, attorneys general from 39 states and Washington, D.C. filed nine conditions for any buyer, including real age checks, limits on training AI with chats, and letting every user delete their data before a sale. Florida formally joined that coalition's filing on October 20. If you want your data gone rather than copied, read how to delete your Character.AI account, but export first, because deletion is permanent.

Your export is a record, not a portable save file, so no other app can load your Character.AI history and carry on where you left off. Character cards are different: SillyTavern and similar front ends read character cards, which is why the PNG and JSON formats matter if you want to rebuild a favorite character somewhere else. Our ranked list of apps like Character.AI compares nine alternatives on price, age rating and how likely each one is to still be here next year.

There is a different move worth considering. Many long-time Character.AI users spent years telling characters about their own lives: their families, their jokes, the things they never say out loud. That material is about you, and it does not need to live inside somebody else's fictional character. Afterlife.ai™ builds a Persona of you, from your own memories and stories, that speaks in your own cloned voice and answers the way you would. The people you choose can talk with your Persona, and you decide who they are while you are alive. Our Character.AI alternative guide explains how a Persona differs from a character.

You start by talking, and your Persona grows from what you share. The free build gives you 25 memories, up to 5 Trusted Contacts and Executor Lock™ setup, with no card and no expiry.

1. Sign up at app.afterlife.ai or on the iPhone or Android app (Afterlife.ai™ is for adults 18 and over).

2. Tell your Persona the stories you used to tell your characters: where you grew up, the people you love, what you find funny.

3. Record your voice so your Persona speaks as you. Creating your voice is free.

4. Name your Trusted Contacts, the people who can talk with your Persona.

5. Set up Executor Lock™, so the person you name controls your Persona after your death and nobody can edit, retrain or impersonate you. See who owns your AI twin after you die for why that matters.

Plans start at US$14.99 a month when you want more than the free build; see pricing. The difference from a character app is ownership of the rules: you decide who talks with your Persona, and your executor decides what happens next, in writing, before anything goes wrong.

• Character.AI Help Center: How do I download my data?

• Character.AI Help Center: How do I delete my account?

• Character.AI Help Center: How can I change my email address?

• Character.AI: Privacy Policy, effective July 1, 2026

• Character.AI blog: An update on Character.AI

• Stretto: Character Technologies, Inc. case information

• CourtListener: Character Technologies, Inc., docket 26-11603

• Cornell Law School LII: California Code of Regulations, title 11, section 7021 (response deadlines)

• GDPR-Info: Article 15, right of access by the data subject

• Chambers and Partners: Data Protection and Privacy 2026, Indonesia

• KQED: Your Chatbot Just Went Bankrupt. What Happens Now to Your User Data?

• NBC News: Character.AI files for bankruptcy, will sell some assets to Disney

• Firefox Add-ons: CAI Tools by Muhammed İrşat