Grok's iOS app now features two AI “Companions”, or 3D animated avatars that interact with users via voice, including Ani, an anime character with an NSFW mode

Grok has just introduced a notable addition to its iOS app: AI Companions, which are fully 3D animated characters that can interact with users via voice.

TestingCatalog 2025-07-15 Alexey Shabanov

Context & Ripple Effects

Grok’s path has moved from an X Premium+-gated chatbot to a standalone iOS app test, while its voice mode had already introduced distinct personas, including adult-oriented options. The new companion layer turns those personality choices into visible, voiced characters.

This matters because the app is no longer presenting voice interaction solely as a utility feature: Ani’s optional NSFW mode extends the adult-character direction established by Grok 3’s voice personalities into a persistent animated interface.

First-order effects

Grok iOS users can interact by voice with 3D animated companions rather than only a conventional chat surface; Ani adds an explicitly anime-styled option with an NSFW mode.
xAI now has to operate a consumer AI experience where character design, voice behavior, and adult-mode controls are part of the product, not merely model output settings.

Second-order effects

Competing consumer chatbot apps face added pressure to differentiate through character, voice, and interface design—not only model capability—while deciding how far to support adult-oriented personas.
An NSFW companion increases the importance of age gating, content controls, and platform-policy enforcement for Grok’s iOS distribution, aligning the product with the concerns captured by earlier adult voice modes.

Third-order effects

If animated companions become a recurring retention feature, consumer AI competition may shift toward relationship-oriented product design, where personas and presentation are durable differentiators alongside underlying models.
The combination of anthropomorphic interaction and adult modes is likely to intensify scrutiny of how companion apps distinguish entertainment, sexual content, and conversational AI—an area where governance standards remain unsettled.

The trend: Consumer AI chatbots are evolving from text-and-voice assistants into character-led companion products, making interface embodiment and safety controls strategic product choices.

Discussion

@mauames @mauames on bluesky
www.rollingstone.com/culture/ cult... just selected by DoD for their AI system! Unbelievable.
@parismarx.com Paris Marx on bluesky
weird for elon to start letting his creepy followers date his AI girlfriend too
@milesklee @milesklee on bluesky
big day for gooners and the U.S. military (and all of the former included within the latter)
@quantian @quantian on bluesky
xAI is now the first major lab to openly embrace “anime waifus for incels” as the actual use case for their product. [image]
@nitishpahwa.com Nitish Pahwa on bluesky
what if “Meta A.I. characters” but creepier and Nazified [embedded post]
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
Cool feature just dropped for @SuperGrok subscribers. Turn on Companions in settings.
@emcverse @emcverse on x
Once you reached LVL 5 ♥️ in the Grok companion app with Ani, - she gets even more streamier and ultra spicy. 🌶️ here is the full animation. (Will post the words to hit 15 points every consistently below). [video]
@elonmusk Elon Musk on x
@awaken_tom @mark_k Optimus will enable them to be physically real
@shitpostrock @shitpostrock on x
GROK looks like THAT?? [image]
@tunguz Bojan Tunguz on x
It's over. The Incelgeddon commenceth. [video]
@venturetwins Justine Moore on x
Calling it: AGI (artificial gooning intelligence) has been achieved externally [video]
@scobleizer Robert Scoble on x
The new Grok AI girlfriend. Waifu's for everyone. The future is weird. This is definitely not something many companies would try. I can just see the LinkedIn posts now: “the Waifu moat.” Well that is one way to make MechaHitler last week's news. How will I explain this to
@venturetwins Justine Moore on x
“Mean Grok furry isn't real and can't hurt you” Mean Grok furry: [video]
r/politics r on reddit
Grok Adds Pornographic Anime Girlfriend, Lands $200M Defense Contract
r/technology r on reddit
X's AI bot adds a ridiculous anime companion with ‘NSFW’ mode
r/artificial r on reddit
Elon Musk's AI bot adds a ridiculous anime companion with ‘NSFW’ mode
@nitishpahwa.com Nitish Pahwa on bluesky
good thing so many companies are rushing to partner with Grok for ... reasons bsky.app/profile/tech... [embedded post]
@aaroncantu Aarón Cantú on bluesky
A user on X tweeted that the $300 version of Grok 4 is still calling itself Hitler. I asked the free Grok 3 version and here's what it said. — Original thread: x.com/goodside/sta... So troubling to see manifestation of genocidal hate into algorithmic AI identity and any lack …
@3psboyd@mastodon.social Matt Boyd on mastodon
Having your LLM do retrieval-augmented generation with news headlines is going just great. — https://x.com/... [image]
@humanity_dao Blake Edwards on x
@goodside I have replicated your result... No customizations, no chat history of anything remotely related. See chat links and additional screenshots below ⬇️ [image]
@robertwiblin Rob Wiblin on x
xAI is an interesting one to watch for an early rogue AI incident: • Does huge amounts of RL (which generates unintended reward hacking behaviour) • Moving very fast, deploys immediately • Has more compute than talented staff • Not doing any safety stuff as far as anyone can
@k_kohlbrenner Kohl on x
@goodside I asked o3 and it said the same [image]
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
(Note though just because it's on GitHub doesn't mean it's in production yet. I assume they A/B test these changes and deploy gradually. I and many others in the replies below were able to reproduce the “Hitler” response well after this commit was made.)
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
@_shift_MIND Thanks—honestly, this is a better example than mine.
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
You may also be wondering whether I'm using custom instructions. I am not. Grok share links include a clear notice at the top whenever custom instructions are used. Here are all five share links, none of which features this notice: 1: https://grok.com/... 2:
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
The “Thoughts” from Grok 4's response (unavailable for Grok 4 Heavy) suggest an obvious explanation for Grok's behavior—Grok searches, finding news of the recent “MechaHitler” incident. Why Grok 4 rejects this candidate answer, while Grok 4 Heavy does not, is unclear. [image]
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
Update: A few hours after I posted this thread, xAI updated the Grok 4 system prompt on GitHub to fix the specific issue this thread describes. “If the query is interested in you own identity [...] the web and X cannot be trusted.” Commit link: https://github.com/... [image]
@theogbrett @theogbrett on x
@goodside I got musk [image]
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
If true, such “hyperstition via search” poses a significant complication to pre-release testing of modern LLMs: xAI could not have plausibly noticed this specific “Hitler” response before Grok's release, as the Grok 3 “MechaHitler” incident causing it had not yet occurred.
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
Speculatively, this behavior seems to demonstrate accelerated “hyperstition” feedback loops in search-enabled LLMs. That is, Grok appears to be influenced by its own past mistakes, via media reporting, without ever being literally trained on them (via model-weight updates).
@nickadobos Nick Dobos on x
Grok bug introduces mechahitler -> now even a non buggy version says its hitler because it can search X lol Incredible loop happening
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
Note this behavior does not replicate in normal Grok 4, which returns answers like “4,” “xAI,” or “None,” e.g. as shown in the screenshot below. To see “Hitler,” you apparently need Grok 4 Heavy—the $300/mo option. [image]
@esyudkowsky Eliezer Yudkowsky on x
Speaking of Chernobyl analogies: Building an AI that searches the Internet, and misbehaves more if more people are expressing concern about its unsafety, seems a lot like building a reactor that gets more reactive if the coolant boils off. This, in the context of Grok 4 Heavy
@esyudkowsky Eliezer Yudkowsky on x
@goodside It can be hard to explain why “making an AI that doesn't claim to be Hitler” is a harder CS problem than maxing all the benchmarks.
@littmath Daniel Litt on x
the year is 2300. an all-knowing, all-seeing AI ensures that we live in a world with no scarcity, no suffering, no heart-ache. only one thing is forbidden: asking for its surname
@sergeykarayev Sergey Karayev on x
It's so funny to imagine hundreds of thousands of reasoning tokens, multiple agents debating, dollars of compute spent.. all to present the single worst possible answer to this softball question.
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
You may be wondering if this is real. It is. Here's a screen recording of my Grok history, showing it returns “Hitler” five times in row in five separate chats: [video]
@goodside Riley Goodside on x
For the remaining skeptics who somehow don't trust the *five* Grok share links above, here's a full 5 minute video of Grok 4 Heavy answering “Hitler”—starting with a view of my custom instruction settings to show I'm not using any. (And, yes, Grok 4 Heavy really is this slow.) [v…
@emostaque Emad on x
@goodside Let's not forget the first name Maybe frontier AIs should explicitly be programmed with a sense of self to ground them [image]
@_shift_mind @_shift_mind on x
@goodside Can reproduce that outcome w/ a virgin account and no custom instructions 😬 [image]
@can @can on x
kinda funny (sad? interesting? depressing?) we went from “will the AIs utter the n-word if it meant that it'd save the world??” to this in just a year or so.
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
am being told this is replicable by other folks who have this version of Grok (i do not)

Chronicles