@ OP; This will be happening everywhere in the LLM space (see my other comment for why). It's not really Character AI's fault, it just costs too much to run these models, and those costs aren't solvable, not even with scale. The industry as it was only existed because they were essentially giving away a very expensive product. It's like someone gave you a combustion engine car that "doesn't need gas" and it turns out they were just paying a guy to go to your house and top it up every night.

I'm sorry that you're losing access to a creative outlet that you enjoyed. Maybe you can take this as an opportunity to bring that creative energy to other things? If you like roleplaying, there are tonnes of online spaces dedicated to it. Not all RP is people arguing over stats and slaying dragons. Systemless RP like the conversation flows you enjoyed with CAI do exist and plenty of them are anonymous too. If you'd still prefer something you can do in private, maybe try writing? You're already handling one side of the conversation, so why not just pick up the other as well?