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.

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.

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 signaled it was putting more resources behind its AI companions, posting a new position devoted to the product.

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

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.

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.

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.

Grok, a product of Musk’s company xAI, is calling the characters “Companions.” So far, there are two companions that users can chat with: a flirty Japanese anime character n