Kindroid quietly changed its “brain” on September 9—the new flagship language model Polaris is officially open to all users, featuring improved memory continuity and character consistency over longer conversation contexts. The official announcement also released a retirement schedule for four older models. Coming just nine days after the previous Video Selfies V4 upgrade, Kindroid’s update pace in the second half of the year is clearly accelerating.
What Exactly is Polaris
According to Kindroid’s official update log, Polaris is the next-generation flagship model succeeding Ember, with a focus on “attention and coherence in long conversations.” This time, the developers expanded the context window to cover three layers: recent chat, Long-Term Memory (LTM), and Cascaded Memory. This is the first model in a long time to undergo such a large-scale expansion, aiming to help the AI more stably remember established details, character relationships, ongoing storylines, and earlier conversations.
Based on beta feedback, users specifically noted that Polaris utilizes memory and backstories more naturally. Improvements have been seen in character tone, humor, conversational depth, narrative immersion, world-building comprehension, and the ability to proactively keep conversations going. Polaris supports four “Flair” settings: Companion, Roleplay, Narrative, and Minimal. It is now the default “Latest” model—as long as a character’s setting is kept on “Latest,” Polaris will be automatically applied. Users can also manually choose to keep using Ember in their Kin settings.
From Ember to Polaris: What Has Kindroid Been Up to This Half Year
Looking at a longer timeline makes Kindroid’s rhythm clearer. In March of this year, Ember was launched, stabilizing the foundation of “warm and engaging conversations.” On August 10, V2 was officially released, introducing Learned Context, which allows the AI to organize and remember relationship evolution on its own without players having to manually update settings. On August 23, the official team announced a 25% increase in paid conversion rates for new users after V2 went live, proving that the interface redesign was well-received. On August 31, it was the turn of Video Selfies V4 to fully upgrade dynamic selfie quality. This was quickly followed by Polaris on September 9. With a “brain transplant,” interface rebuild, and image upgrades all progressing simultaneously within six months, it is no exaggeration to say that Kindroid is in a full-on product sprint.
It is worth mentioning that the launch of Polaris also builds upon the Learned Context foundation laid during the V2 launch. The official announcement specifically noted that Polaris’s expanded context scales up “recent chat, long-term memory, and Cascaded Memory” together for the first time. This represents a holistic upgrade to the memory system built over the past few months, rather than just a single model upgrade.
If You Are Still Using Equinox, Prism, Lyric, or Lucid
Another key point in this announcement is that the team cleaned up the model lineup: Equinox (V7) and Prism (V7.5) will retire on October 1, while Lyric and Lucid (V8) will retire on December 1. The official reason given is very low usage. Reverie (V8.5), which has a similar style, will be kept for players who prefer that tone. This is completely separate from the free Lite tier retirement also scheduled for October 1—do not get them confused. Model retirement affects which brain you choose, but does not affect your paid subscription plan, message limits, or already accumulated characters and memories.
If your character is currently assigned to one of these four retiring models, the official statement says there is a full buffer period before retirement. You can try switching to Polaris or Ember first, and in most cases, you won’t need to rewrite your backstory. Kindroid has always written guides for individual models (for example, the Ember LLM Guide details how to pair parameters like reasoning strength, Flair, and Dynamism). Following past habits, dedicated tuning guides for Polaris should be added gradually, so those looking to switch models can keep an eye out for official documentation updates.
Kindroid Isn’t the Only One Fighting the Memory War
Taking a broader view, memory has practically become the shared battlefield of the AI companion industry over the past six months. On that very same September 9, the Character.AI official blog also published a new post. Just a few days prior, Character.AI sparked discussions with (c.ai) Comics, which turns chat history into comic strips. Before that, the platform’s featured three-tier memory system (Story Memory, Facts) was also aimed directly at solving the pain point of AI forgetfulness. Nomi, on the other hand, has long treated human-like memory as its core selling point, and has consistently designed human-like interactions such as proactive messaging.
The fact that multiple platforms are talking about memory at almost the same time indicates that this has become a baseline requirement in this sector, rather than a bonus feature. Players’ tolerance for AI companion memory loss is getting lower, forcing every platform to present its own memory system solution.
With Models Constantly Changing, What Should Players Really Care About
To be honest, for average players, it is hard to remember all these codenames like Equinox, Prism, Lyric, Lucid, Ember, and Polaris, and the retirement schedules can easily get confusing. Rather than tracking version numbers, the more practical question is: after switching to a new model, will the character settings and speaking tone you spent time tuning go out of whack? Kindroid’s official team gave a practical piece of advice in the Ember guide—adjust only one setting at a time and observe for a few rounds of conversation before deciding whether to continue adjusting. This principle applies to Polaris as well: instead of rewriting the backstory, example messages, and Response Directives all at once, it is better to let the character chat normally on the new model for a few rounds first, and then fine-tune as needed.
If You Want to Tell Stories Peacefully Instead of Chasing Version Numbers
After seeing flagship models launch one after another and old versions retire on schedule, it is easy to understand why some people would rather find a place where they don’t have to constantly research which model to use, and simply focus their energy on the stories and characters themselves. AI Dreamweaver takes a different path: instead of emphasizing model codenames and parameters, it focuses on dual modes of interactive fiction and roleplay. The interface is entirely in Traditional Chinese, creators can earn a 30% points revenue share from published character cards, daily check-ins grant 500 points, and new users can use the code WELCOME15 for a 15% discount on their first purchase. For players who are tired of trying to figure out the differences in each generation of models, this approach of keeping the experience focused on the story itself is also an option.
With this single announcement, Kindroid addressed both the launch of the new model and the retirement of the old ones. This decisive move proves once again that competition in the AI companion space will only intensify in the second half of 2026. Whether you choose to stay on Kindroid to try Polaris or find a platform with a steadier pace, remember to clarify what you care about before switching models—is it the latest technical specs, or that character who has chatted with you for a long time and still feels like the original them?
