How to Export Your Character.AI Data (Start Today)

Published October 16, 2026 · Updated October 16, 2026

Updated 16 October 2026

Short answer: Start the export today. Character.AI's own help page says exports take three to four weeks to process, and the bankruptcy auction is scheduled for late November — so a request made now arrives with time to spare, and one made in mid-November may not. Web: Profile → Profile Settings → Account → Manage Account & Data → Export Data. App: Profile → Settings → Legal & Privacy → Export Data. The download link comes by email.

Why the hurry, exactly?

Because of arithmetic, not panic.

The export is not instant — the company's own documentation says three to four weeks. Competing bids in the bankruptcy are due around 20 November, with an auction and sale hearing following. A request filed today lands well before any of that. A request filed in three weeks lands in the middle of it, when the company that processes your request may be in the middle of changing hands.

Nothing about your data has been decided. That is the point: an export costs you five minutes and makes the decision irrelevant to you.

Are my chats part of what's being sold?

Not to Disney — that much is in writing. The licence agreement filed with the court lists "Excluded IP" and that list explicitly includes end-user data, personally identifiable information, anything users typed, and the outputs generated for them. Headlines claiming your conversations are "up for auction to Disney" contradict the actual document.

But that isn't the whole answer. The sale is of "all or substantially all" of the company's assets, and Disney is the opening bidder for only part of them. Other bidders can come for the rest, and the company has asked the court for permission to name additional lead bidders for other assets.

In the first hearing on 14 October, the company's lawyer told the court that no buyer had so far offered to purchase user data or the chatbot business itself. That's a statement in a hearing, not a binding commitment, and it describes the position on one day.

Attorneys general from 39 states and the District of Columbia have asked that any buyer be held to nine conditions, including real age verification and deletion of characters posing as therapists or doctors. Asked — these are requests, not orders the court has imposed.

The exact steps

On the web: Profile → Profile Settings → Account → Manage Account & Data → Export Data.

In the app: Profile → Settings icon → Legal & Privacy → Export Data.

Then wait. The link arrives by email, and the company says processing takes three to four weeks. You can't export a single conversation — it's the whole account or nothing.

What you actually get

Here the official documentation goes quiet: Character.AI's help page doesn't say what the export contains or in what format. That's a gap in their documentation, not in this article.

What people who have run it report — treat as unofficial — is a ZIP containing three JSON files: one with account details, one listing your characters, and one with your messages, with the text sitting in a field called `raw_content`. Images are not included, and pinned memories come through inconsistently.

So: your words survive, your pictures probably don't.

What deleting your account does not do

Worth knowing before you treat deletion as a clean exit.

Your public characters may stay. The privacy policy reserves the right to keep a character you created active on the service if it has been made available to other users — "even if you otherwise delete your data and your account."

Some data can be retained anyway. The same policy allows keeping information as needed to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce agreements. With active lawsuits and a bankruptcy running, those grounds are not hypothetical.

Deletion is permanent and not reversible. If you want your conversations, export first and confirm the file arrived — then delete, if you still want to.

Steps, if you do: Web: Profile → Profile Settings → Account → Manage Account & Data → Delete Account. App: Profile → Settings → Remove Account. (The app button says Remove, not Delete.)

If you're in Europe or the UK

You have two extra levers.

You can opt out of your content being used to train the models — this option exists only in the EEA and the UK. App: Settings → Data & Privacy → untick "Improve the Model for Everyone." Web: Settings → Account → Manage Account & Data → Model Improvement. Note the limit in their own wording: opting out stops new content being used, not what already was.

And you have GDPR rights directly: Character Technologies is named as data controller for the EEA and UK, with rights to access, a machine-readable copy, correction, deletion and objection. Requests go through their support form or [email protected].

Does bankruptcy override privacy promises?

Not automatically, and history is mixed.

The closest recent case is 23andMe: a court approved the sale of genetic data for $305 million over the objection of 27 states, reasoning that the structure of that particular deal didn't breach the privacy policy. Older cases went the other way — in Toysmart and RadioShack, regulators intervened because the companies had promised never to sell personal information, and the settlements sharply limited what could change hands.

Under California law, transferring personal information as part of a bankruptcy is carved out of the definition of a "sale," so the usual opt-out doesn't apply. Under GDPR there is no settled answer, though practitioners agree a buyer needs its own legal basis to process what it acquires.

None of this is a prediction about Character.AI. It's the reason that "the privacy policy protects your data" is a weaker sentence than it sounds.

If you're looking for somewhere to land

Export first; migration can wait. When you do look, the thing worth checking on any platform is exactly what's in question here: does it let you take your data out, and does it say what it keeps and for how long.

Ours is Hot Muses Universe, and this is the interested party talking. We publish retention periods per data type, deletion requests are honoured with removal from the live database promptly and from backups within thirty days, and there's a caveat we'd rather state than hide: there's currently no in-product button for deleting a single message — that goes through a request. Muses are written in advance rather than user-generated, so there's no character of yours to lose. Free to start, no card, 18+.

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