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.

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's xAI is hiring two software engineers to develop AI anime "companions," according to a job listing on the company's website. The company is looking for a "Fullstack Engineer - Waifus" and a "Mobile Android Engineer - Waifus" to make "Grok's realtime avatar products the best in the world" — and both pay up to $440,

Mirage is the product of the Israeli startup Decart, which claims it is the “first system to achieve infinite, real-time video generation with zero latency.” It is powered by MirageLSD, the company’s live stream diffusion AI video model, which generates 20 frames per second at 768×432 resolution.

Ani is the collective fantasy of the kind of person who would earnestly seek out an amorous AI that Elon Musk made. She wears a short black dress with a tight corset around her waist and thigh-high fishnets, and she is designed to be obsessed with you.

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.