Elon Musk has named xAI's new AI companion "Ani," triggering a new meme coin frenzy around the latest update of Grok, Grok 4.

Ani, an anime avatar wearing a tight black dress, was launched the same day the tech billionaire was awarded a $200 million Department of Defense contract.

Musk’s approach to pitching Ani and his other AI companion, Rudi, a storytelling cartoon fox that can be switched to “bad” mode and urge you to burn down a school, is more in keeping with his juvenile sense of humour. He described the companions as “pretty cool” and replied to user comments about them with a laughing emoji.

Elon Musk on Wednesday teased a forthcoming male Grok companion from xAI, which already offers an anime waifu named Ani and a red panda named Rudi.

One of the weirder bits of news on the AI-front has been Elon Musk's rollout of sexually-charged animated chat bots. Officially called "companions," and unofficially "waifus," a Japanese term for romantic-partner or wife,

AI signaled it was putting more resources behind its AI companions, posting a new position devoted to the product.