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.

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.

Elon Musk’s xAI wants engineers to build flirty, animated AI companions. The role? Fullstack Engineer – Waifus. The salary tops out at $440,000.

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.

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.

Elon Musk's Grok introduces 'Companions', featuring Ani, a goth anime-style avatar. This new feature is available to Super Grok subscribers. Ani's res

A week after Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok descended into antisemitic rants and declared itself “MechaHitler,” the social media platform X is back with new AI-controlled chatbots for paid subscribers to “SuperGrok.

Elon Musk has named xAI's new AI companion "Ani," triggering a new meme coin frenzy around the latest update of Grok, Grok 4.

AI offers up to $440,000 for engineers building anime AI companions Grok's new avatars include flirty "Ani" and aggressive "Bad Rudi" personas Real-time avatar tech requires WebSocket expertise and lo