Musk’s approach to pitching Ani and his other AI companion, Rudi, a storytelling cartoon fox that can be switched to “bad” mode and urge you to burn down a school, is more in keeping with his juvenile sense of humour. He described the companions as “pretty cool” and replied to user comments about them with a laughing emoji.

The latest version of Grok for iOS (version 1.1.18) comes with two companions — an anime girl called Ani and a red panda called Rudi.

AI’s new $300 monthly subscription comes with two AI companions powered by its most capable model to date. I tried them. It got weird.

Ani, an anime avatar wearing a tight black dress, was launched the same day the tech billionaire was awarded a $200 million Department of Defense contract.

Elon Musk on Wednesday teased a forthcoming male Grok companion from xAI, which already offers an anime waifu named Ani and a red panda named Rudi.

Musk's AI chatbot Ani flirts with users, raising safety and age concerns.AI companions exploit loneliness, using emotional manipulation to hook users

One of the weirder bits of news on the AI-front has been Elon Musk's rollout of sexually-charged animated chat bots. Officially called "companions," and unofficially "waifus," a Japanese term for romantic-partner or wife,

On Wednesday, Elon Musk discussed a new male AI “companion” that his company xAI is developing, which will run on the company’s unhinged chatbot software Grok. And while it’s not yet clear when this new robot buddy will be released, it sounds an awful lot like Musk is trying to make a romanticized version of himself.

Welcome to the rise of Grok Valentine and Ani, the newest AI companions from Elon Musk’s xAI—two digital entities that have taken Japan by storm and are quietly reshaping the global emotional landscape.