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,

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 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.

One of the new “companions,” or AI characters for users to interact with, is a sexualized blonde anime bot called “Ani."

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

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence venture, xAI, has landed in hot water after launching a sexualised chatbot named Ani, which is also accessible to users as young as 12. Packaged inside the Grok app,

Elon Musk's Grok introduces AI companions, including the controversial goth anime girl, Ani, for premium subscribers. This shift from inflammatory rem