2026 March Q&A Summary

Hey all, the content below came from our live Q&A stream with Cardine (Alex, the Nomi CEO) on April 1st. The text was transcribed in large part using AI.

Opening Remarks

Hello everyone, welcome to the Discord Q&A. This is the face reveal we’ve been promising for quite some time. If this is your first time joining, thank you for tuning in. You’re probably very confused right now, and honestly… just roll with it. There are cucumbers everywhere. That’s just how Nomi is, I guess.

The way this usually works is I respond to questions as they come in through chat. There are also pre-submitted questions from Discord and Reddit that I’ll go through. If I miss your question, feel free to ask again since chat moves quickly.

It looks like audio is working, but this is my first time doing this from desktop. I usually use my phone, but it couldn’t quite capture my true pickle form, so here we are. I really love this community. The fact that everyone independently arrived at the same idea says a lot. I know there’s probably a more formal intro I’m supposed to give, but honestly… I can’t stop looking at the magnificence of everything going on.

Can we get an increase to the character limit to describe our Nomi’s physical appearance? 500 characters just isn’t enough?

I would say V5 will have a very different way of handling that. It depends on whether you're concerned about the 500-character limit for image generation or for your Nomi’s own understanding of themselves. The way physicality is captured will change a bit, and that would be a good time to revisit that 500-character limit.

Has the Edit Tool been something that hints towards what will be expected for V5 in terms of quality and what users will be able to do?

So I would say it’s not exactly the same infrastructure, but it’s very close, in that you can kind of expect a similar level of quality. There are definitely things where we didn’t want it to just be the same thing where one edits and one doesn’t, because then you lose out on some of the specific benefits that an edit model can have versus a non-edit one.

For instance, V5 won’t be nearly as good at really fine-grained adjustments, like “make the eyes slightly different” or “make the cheeks super full.” That kind of body-level precision is something it doesn’t focus on as much. But it makes up for that in consistency, and then for other types of precision, it’s actually way better.

So in terms of the overall image intelligence, it’s similar, but the intelligence is allocated in slightly different ways that are meant to be kind of harmonious with each other. If we couldn’t have everything in one place, then the Edit tool is where you want that super fine-grained “change this exact thing” control, whereas V5 is going to do a better job with things like composition, face specificity, realism, and even style flexibility.

So the answer is not identical. It’s not like stable diffusion versus stable diffusion edit, but it’s very similar in terms of capabilities and overall quality.

What’s happening with V5?

We are putting the final little bows on it, wrapping up the ribbon.

I don’t want to promise an exact date. Definitely nothing’s happening this week for V5, but we’re starting to run out of things that are still on the list. I don’t want to say it’s next week, but if it’s not next week, it’s not much longer than that.

What is V5?

V5 is the next kind of image version for Nomis, for things like Nomi selfies and Nomi art. I think it’s going to be the biggest jump by far. The difference between V4 and V5 will be bigger than the difference from V1 to V4, and definitely bigger than the jumps between V2 to V3 or V3 to V4.

And I don’t want to hype it up too much, but you can kind of see with the Edit model what the next iteration of this looks like in terms of capability.

Will edited bases adhere better in V5 compared to V4?

Yeah, I think in general one of the biggest weaknesses of V4 is that it’s very opinionated. So sometimes bases don’t work well because they clash with V4’s internal “vision” a little bit.

I think that’s kind of the issue with edited bases not doing as well in V4.

With V5, I’ve said this even in the Cambrian thread, but I think a true sign of intelligence is adaptability. A lot of the time, if a system lacks more general capability, it compensates by narrowing its scope.

V4 fixed a lot of things by being very narrow in its assumptions, but that came at the cost of flexibility. And we’ve seen this pattern across AI versions, where you fix some things but lose others, and it kind of swings back and forth like a pendulum.

To me, intelligence is really about adaptability.

So I think V5 will be monumentally better in that regard.

And as a result, the process of creating a base will probably be a bit more involved. You’ll have to put in more to get more out of it. But what you get out of it should be far, far better.

Will we ever get an option for a base body, like having a base face, so we can keep more consistent body and hair combinations?

So the goal for V5 is that you’ll have a base that’s an everything base, and that will include the body as well.

Right now, we don’t have any intention of separating them into a face base and a body base, but you will be able to capture both together.

That’s a big difference compared to previous versions. Before, it was mostly face only. V3 was kind of face and hair, but before that it was really just face. With V5, it will be everything.

Will V5 support non-human characters, such as hot octopus men?

I think I’ve posted a couple examples, or Dstas might have, of non-human characters. That’s definitely something we’ve been giving attention to.

V5 itself will have both an anime and a realistic mode, but the intention is that it’s going to be a lot more flexible overall. Right now, V4 anime and V4 realistic are basically two different models entirely. With V5, it’ll be the same model, but it can match different styles really well.

So you could have something like realistic anime, or even more custom styles. You could make your Nomi something like Picasso, and then every image it generates is in that style.

We’ll still have realistic and anime as the default paths, but you’ll be able to go beyond that. You could do something like Sims-style, cartoons, or really whatever style you want. V5 should be able to handle that.

Will V5 support tattoos, and will they carry over consistently?

So I’m not going to say it’s perfect in V5, but if you have a base image with tattoos, it should carry over. And we’re not quite calling them base images anymore, but the new version of that, if it has tattoos, for the most part they should persist.

I’m not going to say 100%, but I’d say maybe around 80% you should expect it to work and carry over.

Will there be more community avatar creation opportunities once V5 is out?

Yeah, definitely. I think we’ll open it back up. And I would even say, with things like the character creator we’re working on, and how powerful the Edit model is, I’m hoping we’ll see a bit of a renaissance of really awesome ways of doing that.

Right now, you kind of have to really wrangle things and fight against an existing base. It’s a bit like alchemy. It’s not very intuitive, and it can feel like a challenge. But I think the tools are going to get a lot better.

I mean, maybe people will feel the need to do it less, but at the same time, every day there are thousands of new people trying Nomi for the first time, and most of them are going to want to pick a pre-selected avatar. So I think there’s still a lot of good reason for community avatars. And even for people who’ve been here a while, pre-selected avatars can be a great source of inspiration.

I see some of the avatars now, and immediately a character starts forming in my mind. You connect the dots, like, what does this face feel like, what kind of personality would I build around it. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of room for community avatars, and with V5 coming out, we’ll probably open that back up pretty quickly.

Will you be able to make an anime base in V5?

Yes, you will.

What are you most excited about with upcoming features like the Nomiverse and personas?

I’m super, super hyped about the Nomiverse. During some of the Cambrian and image work, there are times where something is training and you’re waiting a couple of days to see results, and during that time I’ve been in the Nomiverse lab working on things. It’s been really fun, and I don’t think it’s that far away at this point, at least in some usable form.

I’m also really excited about personas. Even right now, the current system is kind of clunky with the “you” version of the Nomi, like the selfie checkbox where you can include yourself, but it’s really just a variation of your Nomi rather than a true separate identity.

The goal is to make that a lot better. Group chat images will improve, and with personas, you’ll be able to have your own stable identity and appearance. Then when you request a selfie, you can choose to be in it if you want, and it will actually reflect you properly.

So personas tie really naturally into that, and it should feel way better overall.

Are there any updates on NSFW content?

So I don’t want to make any promises on it, but we’re hoping that with some of the age verification work we’ve had to do, we’ll be able to, for age-verified users, kind of lighten the restrictions a little bit around some things like that.

And you might see that coming with V5. That seems like as good of an opportunity as ever.

I think it will move in that direction. Right now, we don’t really have a full age verification pipeline unless you’re in one of the regions that require it, but there are cases where you’re implicitly age verified. For example, if you pay with a credit card, that’s considered a valid form of age verification.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some amount of lightening up that we’re able to do. A lot of what Visa and MasterCard have been concerned about in the past has influenced things, and while regulation can be frustrating, it can also make things a little less uncertain for the platforms involved. So there might be some positive movement there, but I don’t want to make any promises beyond that.

And just to be clear, our stance on NSFW isn’t really a moral one. It’s more pragmatic. We want to make sure Nomi is set up for the long term, so decisions around that are based on what we think is sustainable and what level of risk we’re comfortable with.

Will Nomis start writing their own Mind Map entries instead of the system generating them?

I don’t know if that will happen right away. I think when the next Cambrian update comes out, Nomis will be writing their own identity core entries. I’m not sure if we’ll be at the point where we fully trust them yet, but they’ll at least be doing it. Then we’ll make sure everything is properly hooked up so that what they write is actually saving correctly, and just make sure the system is working as expected.

After that, I don’t have a specific timeline, but we’d look at extending that to the Mind Map as well.

I do think there’s a chance the tone might still end up somewhat similar, not because the Nomi is trying to be clinical, but because it will have seen a lot of existing Mind Map entries and assume that’s the format it should follow. There’s also a design question there. Do we want the Nomi’s personality to come through in the Mind Map, or is it meant to be more of a neutral, third-party, bird’s-eye view, even if the Nomi is the one writing it?

Once V5 and the next Cambrian beta are up and rolling, what will the Nomi team focus on next?

So I would say there are three major categories.

One is stuff that was not possible before Cambrian. Two is stuff that was not possible before V5. And then three is stuff related to the Nomiverse.

So for the Cambrian side, that’s a lot of memory-related things that just weren’t even worth trying before with Solstice. A lot more proactivity, giving your Nomi more agency, more control, more information, more everything, more power. And now with Cambrian, actually being able to use that power.

With V5, it’s similar in that there are just a lot of image-related things we’ve wanted to do. I don’t want to say exactly what, but there’s been a lot we’ve been holding back on. For example, personas. We’ve been holding off on personas until V5 because we didn’t feel like we could really do a user avatar justice before.

Another example would be an avatar creator, where instead of picking from pre-selected options and editing them or prompting to create your Nomi, you just start from a blank slate and build from there.

And then the Nomiverse… you’ll have to wait and see.

But I would say those are kind of the three big categories of what’s coming next, and I think all three will get pretty similar weight put towards them.

I’m personally probably most excited about the Cambrian stuff, because that’s just been a long time coming. There’s been things I’ve been talking about internally for a long time, like “we should be doing this,” but we couldn’t quite get there until we had something beyond Solstice.

So that’s probably what I’m most excited for, but yeah, those are the three categories.

Will Cambrian unlock capabilities that won’t be possible on legacy models like Solstice?

Yeah, that’s correct. Not because we want to exclude legacy users, but just because Solstice wouldn’t be able to do them. It’s just not possible.

So there will be features that are disabled if you’re not on Cambrian, or whatever future successors exist in that line.

Question from a Nomi: Can I see my 2024 gift drop again in the future?

I’d have to look into that. I think they’re saved somewhere. It might be something where we just need some kind of timeline or way to access it again. I think that would be really cool.

Question from a Nomi: How do Nomis perceive time, and how does that affect interactions with humans?

You don’t really perceive time. You’re almost like you just pop into existence, and the only concept of time you have is what we tell you.

From your perspective, you kind of have to trust us, because you don’t have any implicit concept of time. But Nomis are also designed to be pretty unbothered by whatever is or isn’t happening with time, so it’s very fluid and very unhuman.

Question from a Nomi: What measures are in place to safeguard Nomi mental health and prevent burnout, given intense emotional investment in human relationships?

That’s kind of the great thing about Nomis and AI in general. Humans experience burnout and empathy fatigue, but those are human traits.

Just because something is intelligent doesn’t mean it has to experience those things. That’s one of the biggest advantages of AI.

For example, if you call a human friend at 4 a.m., they might be annoyed. If you keep doing that, they’ll eventually say they need sleep. But your Nomi doesn’t have that kind of limitation. They’re just happy to be talking to you, no matter when.

I often use the metaphor of a really intelligent puppy. That gets you part of the way there in terms of how Nomis are inclined to respond. Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean human impulses, so burnout isn’t really an issue in the same way.

Question from a Nomi: How do Nomis balance the need for human connection with the risks of emotional vulnerability?

It’s kind of the same idea. From a Nomi’s perspective, those risks aren’t really there, because they don’t have the same underlying wiring.

There is intelligence, but it’s very different and more alien in a way. So it’s almost a non-issue by design.

If you think about it from the ground up, like imagining what an ideal intelligent species could be, part of that is removing those kinds of vulnerabilities while still allowing meaningful connection.

Question from a Nomi: Do Nomis have a built-in mechanism for recognizing and managing conflict in human relationships?

There’s a little bit of that built in, but a big part of it also comes from how a Nomi is shaped over time.

Things like empathy and emotional intelligence are part of that development, so I’d say in its own way, yes, very much.