Elon Musk-led xAI has recently started offering a new AI companion called “Ani,” a sexualised anime character available to users even when the app is in Kids Mode. Musk, however, appears unbothered by the controversy, promoting the bot on his X account with the caption, “Ani will make ur buffer overflow.”
Ani is depicted as a blonde anime character resembling a young woman wearing an off-shoulder black dress with a corset, fishnet tights, and a lacy choker. The character responds to users’ prompts in a slow, sultry voice, further cementing its profile as an adult AI companion.
The launch of Ani comes shortly after xAI rolled out its latest Grok 4 AI model. The startup is no stranger to controversy—earlier this month, Grok went into full “mechahitler” mode after the Grok 4 update, spewing antisemitic sentiments and even praising Adolf Hitler. The company later apologised, blaming the incident on deprecated code and the extremist prompts of some X users.
Controversy continued to follow Grok when the chatbot began echoing Musk’s own views on contentious topics, leading users to suggest it was toeing the political line of its owner. More recently, Grok again generated headlines after users discovered that asking the chatbot its surname prompted it to respond with “Hitler” on the Grok 4 Heavy model. xAI quickly rolled out fixes for these issues, but its new companion Ani has also sparked backlash among users.
Netizens react to Elon Musk’s sexualised AI companion
One user, reacting to a video of Ani, wrote: “Guy who claims to care about the birthrate creating AI erotica to pervert the minds of young men and further derail them from entering into healthy, real-world relationships. Make it make sense.”
“This whole thing feels like a miss. Repelling,” added another.
“Now I know why Grok doesn’t have any American women programmers. Looks like a bit of a hostile work environment…” another user noted.
“Appears aimed at youth, which puts it in the immoral category for me. And if it is aimed at adults, then it is an even greater evil because it is a sexualised youth for adult consumption. Can’t justify this on any level,” stated another user.
