RealChar

RealChar is an open source project, released under the MIT license, for creating, customizing and talking to AI characters or companions in real time. A user defines a character's personality, background and voice without writing code, then converses with it by voice or text. The project is modular. Language models include OpenAI GPT 3.5 and GPT 4, Anthropic Claude 2, Llama 2 hosted by Anyscale, and ReByte, with Azure OpenAI also supported. Speech recognition can run locally through WhisperX or Whisper, or through the OpenAI Whisper API or Google Speech to Text. Speech output uses Edge TTS by default, which is described as free, with ElevenLabs (including voice cloning) and Google Text to Speech as options. Other integrations include a Chroma vector database, LangSmith tracing and Twilio phone calls, which the README limits to US numbers and ElevenLabs voices. It is aimed at developers and hobbyists who want to run their own character chat stack. Clients include a web app, a terminal client and an open source iOS app. Installation is either Docker, by copying the example environment file, adding an API key and running docker compose up, or a manual Python setup that needs portaudio and ffmpeg, a SQLite database prepared with Alembic, and the backend started with the project command line tool. The software itself is free. Costs come from whichever third party APIs a person connects, such as OpenAI or ElevenLabs. The README mentions a hosted demo at RealChar.ai but publishes no prices.