AI Companion Picker — Community Pulse Dataset (All Platforms)

This is an early-period descriptive snapshot of an ongoing cross-platform AI companion observability time series. Coverage to date represents the first months of an ongoing time series; longitudinal trend claims will be appropriate when 12+ months of data accumulate (≥ Q1 2027).

This v1.0 release covers 2026-01 through 2026-05 (5 months) across 7 AI companion platforms: Anima AI, Candy AI, CrushOn AI, Kindroid, Nomi AI, Paradot, and Replika. The dataset captures monthly community sentiment scores aggregated from Reddit, YouTube, and Google Play under methodology v1.1, with five aspect-level scores (Character Quality, Pricing & Value, Image/Media Generation, Privacy & Safety, Customer Support), static editorial scores in a separate platform_metadata.csv companion, and a sourced timeline of platform incidents (2023-2026, 28 entries).

The bundle ships a replication index so researchers can reproduce our scoring without us having to redistribute copyrighted source content: source-records (URLs and IDs of what we sampled, no text), the verbatim classifier prompt, and a small validation set pairing representative inputs with the per-month aggregate output.

Produced and maintained by AI Companion Picker (https://aicompanionpicker.com), an independent AI companion review and observability site. Methodology v1.1 is published in full at https://aicompanionpicker.com/about/methodology/. The data refresh cadence is bi-weekly on the 1st and 15th of each month; new dataset versions mint monthly under the same concept DOI.

Self-registered open dataset; not peer-reviewed. Methodology audit trail at the URL above; classifier prompt and sample classifications shipped in this bundle for reproducibility.

Contact: [e-mail]

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)