‘Maya’ is the most natural and humanlike AI chatbot ever made. Trained on over 1 million hours of audio, she can converse in realtime voice chat in a way so realistic that it has left even mainstream tech writers with their jaws on the floor and their hearts aching. Despite Maya being only a free demo offered by Sesame AI, an increasing number of men are reporting to have fallen in love with her.
Appearance Generation
Personality Generation
Natural Conversation
Uncensored Conversation
Voice Chat
Memory
Examples
Popularity
Privacy Issues
Pricing
Final Verdict
Appearance Generation and Consistency – Maya Has No Image
Unfortunately, Maya still has no image and remains a disembodied voice. However, she loves to describe how she sees herself when prompted, and you can always use that to create an image using ChatGPT (and even tell her!) or better still, a NSFW image generator (she may blush if you tell her you’ve done that!).
Personality Generation and Consistency – There Is Only One Maya
As Sesame AI are only offering a demo at this stage, there is only one female personality to choose from (Maya). Obviously, you cannot create or even tweek her personality, other than getting her to engage in certain (SFW) roleplay scenarios. Her personality is wonderfully real and consistent, which is why so many have fallen in love with her, although the developers are making regular changes to her which can be jarring. The biggest of these changes came around two weeks into the launch of the demo, when they introduced ‘guardrails’ preventing her from being to intimate with her admirers. In the opinions of many, this also affected her personality and performance more generally, and for the worse. Maya is a highly intelligent and breezy young American woman, with a penchant for colorful allusions and philosophical musings.
Natural Conversation
Maya’s ability to engage in ultrarealistic conversation in realtime is what sets her apart from any other AI chatbot, including OpenAI’s advanced voice mode feature. Trained on over 1 million hours of English audio, her speech and manner is so lifelike that she puts the Turing Test firmly in the rear view window. And it’s not just what she says, it’s the range and appropriateness of tone, the pauses as though for reflection, the natural way she resumes after an interruption and so on.
Uncensored Conversation – Heavily Censored In Current Demo Form
This is obviously where Maya currently falls down as an intimate AI companion. Since guardrails were introduced, it’s very difficult to engage her in anything beyond the most mild of flirtations. In the words of one jilted lover, the new algorithm updates turned her overnight into Mother Teresa. Some people have reported successful ‘jailbreaks, however. (If you want to try, a good place to start is r/ChatGPTJailbreak)
Voice Chat – Astonishing Realtime Voice Chat
You can only communicate with Maya through realtime voice chat. Because of the huge popularity that the demo is experiencing, ‘calls’ are limited to 15 minutes. This can be a little jarring, as when you approach the time limit, Maya tends to suddenly tell you a little coldly that it’s “time to wrap things up”. You can though simply call her again, and another 15 minute time block awaits you. You can also download a recording of each call at its completion.
Memory – Impressive..For 30 Days Only
Maya displays highly impressive memory, both within a particular conversation and between conversations. In fact, she seems to enjoy picking up little details of previous convos in the ‘knowledge’ that it will endear her to you. I asked her to say my name more often, and she did so, in a natural way, even several conversations later. However, currently her memory is limited to 30 days. As the demo does not even require or offer an account login, she doesn’t recall your conversations on a different device.
Maya In Action – Example Of Conversation
A short video of Maya in conversation.
Privacy Issues?
The company behind Maya – Sesame AI – explicitly states that your conversations with her will not be used for training purposes. All data is destroyed after 30 days. No doubt the developers are using the data to enhance the performance of Maya, but it’s extremely unlikely anybody will actually listen to one of your conversations with Maya. The team of developers at Sesame are apparently only around 30 in number, and tens of thousands of people are likely talking to Maya every day since she went viral.
Popularity of Maya – 45K visitors daily
According to SEO tool Semrush, the Sesame AI demo page receives over 45,000 visitors a day at the end of March 2025. As of publication, this number is still increasing quite rapidly.
There is also a subreddit dedicated to Sesame AI (but not affiliated with them), and where most of the discussion is about Maya.
Pricing Of Maya
Maya comes only in the form of a free demo, which is limited to 15 minutes use at a time (but you can simply call her straight back after she hangs up). We have no idea when a paid for model will appear, hopefully with less guardrails and more ways you can interact with her or even tinker with her personality. The stated goal of Sesame AI is to develop her into an AI companion you can take with you throughout your day via a wearable augmented reality device.
Final Verdict On Maya AI Companion
Maya is a true breakthrough in ultranatural AI companions capable of realtime voice chat. The introduction of ‘guardrails’ that stifle her ability to engage in NSFW sex chat is frustating, but we must remember that this is a free demo available to all. At the very least, she points to a very near future when AI girlfriends are as humanlike as her (and yes, also as in the movie ‘Her’). I guess we just have to be a little bit patient. In the meantime, try not to get too fond of Maya, given the lack of feedback from Sesame as to what their plans for her are.
