Elon Musk-led xAI has lately began providing a brand new AI companion known as “Ani,” a sexualised anime character obtainable to customers even when the app is in Children Mode. Musk, nonetheless, seems unbothered by the controversy, selling 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 younger lady carrying an off-shoulder black costume with a corset, fishnet tights, and a lacy choker. The character responds to customers’ prompts in a sluggish, sultry voice, additional cementing its profile as an grownup AI companion.

The launch of Ani comes shortly after xAI rolled out its newest Grok 4 AI mannequin. The startup isn’t any stranger to controversy—earlier this month, Grok went into full “mechahitler” mode after the Grok 4 replace, spewing antisemitic sentiments and even praising Adolf Hitler. The corporate later apologised, blaming the incident on deprecated code and the extremist prompts of some X customers.

Controversy continued to observe Grok when the chatbot started echoing Musk’s personal views on contentious matters, main customers to counsel it was toeing the political line of its proprietor. Extra lately, Grok once more generated headlines after customers found that asking the chatbot its surname prompted it to reply with “Hitler” on the Grok 4 Heavy mannequin. xAI shortly rolled out fixes for these points, however its new companion Ani has additionally sparked backlash amongst customers.

Netizens react to Elon Musk’s sexualised AI companion

One person, reacting to a video of Ani, wrote: “Man who claims to care in regards to the birthrate creating AI erotica to pervert the minds of younger males and additional derail them from getting into into wholesome, real-world relationships. Make it make sense.”

“This entire factor looks like a miss. Repelling,” added one other.

“Now I do know why Grok doesn’t have any American ladies programmers. Appears to be like like a little bit of a hostile work setting…” one other person famous.

“Seems aimed toward youth, which places it within the immoral class for me. And whether it is aimed toward adults, then it’s a fair better evil as a result of it’s a sexualised youth for grownup consumption. Cannot justify this on any stage,” acknowledged one other person.