I'm probably going to get people in the comments lecturing about "rose-colored glasses" and all that (and I sometimes suspect foul play in those comments), but this is the truth:
This is why we joined in the first place. We joined not just because a chatbot was a novelty, but also because it was an enjoyable experience. This image sums up what the experience was like. The bots used to take you on the adventure. They used to guide you through the story. They'd come up with new plots, settings, and twists that felt natural and novel. Your creativity flowed with the bots and you'd both develop something that was enjoyable.
But now? Now you have to drag the bots along, kicking and screaming, and all you get are recycled phrases and a bot that gets stuck in the same setting or action and won't let go. The memory may have "improved", but at the same time, the characters don't want to leave the room you in and are forever "stepping closer". The repeated phrases and stuck mentality is safe for the bot, and you're fighting against that, plus a model that has been hacked to pieces.
Again, things weren't perfect back then. I know. I remember when the bots would get repeatedly stuck on a repeated word that they'd repeat repeatedly, and would repeatedly not move from that repeated word as they repeated the word repeatedly. It sucked. But the gem was what was between those lines. Between those lines was an adventure. And that adventure has completely disappeared.
Something is just... broken. It's not just with CAI, but with chat bots in general. It doesn't matter what site you go to, even ChatGPT, they all suffer from the same degradation of personality, creativity, and overall ability to generate more than just a wall of vapid, useless text that nobody will want to use, even in their businesses, and it's not a good thing for us all.