Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok has introduced a new feature called AI companions, in which users have access to customisable 3D animated characters, including a goth anime girl. The other character is a furry red panda named Bad Rudy that has a mean, sarcastic personality and a vulgar streak.
"This is pretty cool," Musk wrote in one of his recent posts on X, sharing an image of the anime companion Ani, who is a blonde, pigtailed character wearing a black corset, short dress, and thigh-high fishnets.
Musk confirmed that the AI companion feature is currently in a soft launch and will be easier to activate for Super AI subscribers in a few days. The companions seem to be the latest in a series of features aimed at boosting user engagement and offering greater personalisation for paid users.
See the post here:
Update your app to try out @Grok companions!https://t.co/3M9k0jUmSv https://t.co/DJrHXHI7IM
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2025
It remains unclear if these AI companions are meant to role-play as romantic interests or serve as different skins for users on the app. Some users have pointed out that the feature is similar to Character.ai, where users are able to talk to chatbots based on real-life and fictional characters.
Social media reacts
As the news of the new feature went viral, social media users joked that Mr Musk may have found a way to turn the AI business profitable.
"I mean, that sh*t is probably going to sell, especially with more characters, with different personalities," said one user while another joked: "Character.ai is shaking in their boots lol another wrapper gone."
A third commented: "Can I customise it to look like Karl Marx and read the news with an anti-capitalist bias to propagandise my friends in the bar? That's all I want!"
A fourth said: "There's a lot of data to indicate huge amounts of loneliness in the modern world and perhaps an AI 'companion' can help to off-set this. There isn't any real reason to prevent people from using AI in this way."
What is Grok?
Grok is Mr Musk's answer to his rivals, such as Google and Meta, who have come up with their respective chatbots to take a lead in the AI race. xAI launched Grok 4 last week, with the billionaire touting it one of the most advanced chatbots capable of solving almost any query.
"With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions," said Mr Musk during the launch. "At times, it may lack common sense, and it has not yet invented new technologies or discovered new physics, but that is just a matter of time."
It was in April 2024 that Mr Musk and the xAI team decided that to develop the most advanced AI, they needed to build their own data centre. With a strict deadline, the team managed to get the first 100,000 GPUs operational in just 122 days, calling it a "monumental effort."
This massive computing power has continuously improved Grok, allowing it to function in three modes: DeepSearch, Think, and Big Mind.
