If you thought that the top labs’ AI offerings were all looking sort of similar — a solitary text box in the middle of the screen where users can ask questions — xAI has come up with an idea that is quite left field.
Grok has introduced “AI companions” into its app. These companions currently are a Japanese waifu named Ani, and a red panda named Bad Rudi. These AI companions in the companion mode take on the personalities of their characters, and converse with users through both audio and video. The AI companions are turned off by default, but can be turned on in the settings.
Ani the anime girl appears to be the primary character. She has ponytails, and wears a short black dress and fishnet stockings. Ani can act like a regular AI character. She can answer your queries, and even read out the news for you in her sultry voice. But Ani is also designed to flirt. She puts on the character of a possessive girlfriend, and can roleplay with the user.
Ani also has a Level 5 “spicy mode” which takes things a bit further, with Ani wearing ever-skimpier clothing, and flirting even more fervently with the user.
The other AI companion is a sharp-tongued red panda named Bad Rudi that apart from acting as an AI assistant, can also insult and roast the user.
Now this is a pretty unconventional approach to product development, but one that will likely work. Top AI labs like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI have all created AI models of roughly equal capabilities for the lay user, even though they might be fervently actively competing against each other on benchmarks. As such, there’s little to differentiate between the offerings of these players. xAI, though, seems to have thought out of the box, and has created these AI companions that users can have natural conversations with. These AI companions can lead to sticky user behaviour — users who develop a “relationship” with these avatars will likely not migrate to other apps.
The emergence and easy accessibility of these AI companions, though, can lead to some unintended consequences. Elon Musk is concerned about decreasing population growth, but giving everyone a Japanese waifu on their phones that talks and flirts with them isn’t likely to help with birth rates. Also, dependence on these AI companions can push people further away from contact with real humans, which might have negative long-term effects. But for now, Musk seems to have given Grok4 — already the most powerful AI model as per the benchmark results — something like a killer feature that other AI labs will think twice about emulating.
To enable these AI companions on the Grok app, press the two bars in upper left of screen, then settings (gear) icon in bottom right of screen and turn on Companions.