Grok is making AI companions, including a goth anime girl

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/elon-musks-grok-is-making-ai-companions-including-a-goth-anime-girl/

by akyuu • 1 year ago

47 46 1 year ago

stigz• 1 year ago

Is there any market/demand for AI companions for females (i.e. https://jaimee.ai), or has this trend of AI companions vastly for males? I suspect the latter, but curious if anyone has evidence beyond Jaimee AI of the former.

csande17• 1 year ago

News stories about women using Replika as a companion make the rounds every once in a while: https://www.thecut.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-ch...

deeznuttynutz• 1 year ago

Well, there is an app called Tolan (alien AI friend) that has been very successful and the devs have said that 80% of the users are young women.

I myself have released an app in this realm a few days ago, it's very much a work in progress, but my goal was to let the AI feel more like a computer and less like a companion/boyfriend. I think the relationships these companies are pushing will be harmful in the long term.

My app if you are curious: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lonely-bots-3d-ai-friends/id67...

steveBK1232• 1 year ago

It's mostly for males because the developers behind them are targeting themselves. However I would imagine the market for female users would likely be equal if not larger...

subscribed• 1 year ago

There are places with thousands of user-made bot characters. Some are pretty good quality. From a quick look about half of them are male characters.

Developers don't need to _create bots_, just wrap the UI around the interface to the model that can pretend good enough.

steveBK1232• 1 year ago

Also don't forget the first mover on this topic, Krazam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPQdVC5RHU

unixhero• 1 year ago

Yes, there was a LastWeekTobight episode on AI Slop. There is a product which is popular amongst women, biker boyfriend and sadistic boyfriend were one of the most popular AI-agent flavours.

msgodel3• 1 year ago

From the few of my friends who have talked about this the majority have actually been women. I think the image gen lagged behind the LLM companions because of the computational intensity plus VLMS are just more complex. Because of that it seems like it's been more interesting to women who prefer prose to visuals.

numpad03• 1 year ago

If there were the falsehood list for NSFW contents, there has to be "women must despise sexualized females, so all female depictions must be for mens to consume" pretty high up in it.

robswc4• 1 year ago

You'd be _very_ surprised. This isn't reddit so I probably don't have to write a disclaimer about generalizations... but just in case, I'm speaking in general terms.

Just look at who buys/consumes most written romance. Overwhelmingly women. Now, a super simple AI that just says what you want to hear is different from long-form romance novels... but I think we could see something approaching 50/50.

I personally can't see the appeal. It seems like a fun toy for a bit. Super impressive stuff but the idea of treating it like a human is a bit depressing to me.

fendy3002• 1 year ago

you'd be surprised on how deranged some people are, no matter the sexes. Having a Prince Charming / Manic Pixie Dream Girl that always agree with you will be the utopia for them, and amplifying their mental issues. Soon they'll have their world view warped and that not even considering bad actors. If politically, criminally or economically motive is poisoning the model, they'll be very vulnerable.

It can stay for long term even permanently.

It's very very bad.

mrkramer3• 1 year ago

I personally can't see the appeal. It seems like a fun toy for a bit. Super impressive stuff but the idea of treating it like a human is a bit depressing to me.

I wouldn't mind chatbot trained on Kant's or Hegel's work and asking Hegel for example what he thinks of some modern day issue. I know character.ai has historical characters as chatbots but they seem like toys(I agree with you on that) and they do not cite historical sources.

Zigurd3• 1 year ago

I would go further and bet the team lead and 90% of the team are men under 35 years of age

Bluestein• 1 year ago

(Do they include a huge Mecha-Dictator?)

v5v3• 1 year ago

Elon posted on x and some of the replies I saw were "why an underage girl for a companion".

mrkramer3• 1 year ago

In all seriousness; maybe good idea for a chatbot would be a teenager in order for future parents to learn how to raise and manage an underage person.

vouaobrasil4• 1 year ago

The trend of AI companions is another step towards humans putting less value on real human connections, which only further erodes real-life communities. Many people (more than before) will succumb to being too deeply immersed in virtual worlds, and it will only increase the pathology of society to a degree not before seen.

These AI companies are incredibly irresponsible and contemptible.

msgodel3• 1 year ago

Maybe it's not such a bad thing. People who go outside will be more intentionally looking to socialize and you'll feel less pressure to keep to yourself.

vouaobrasil4• 1 year ago

Actually, it is a bad thing. Because people who have a slight difficulty with socializing, probably because of too much screen time, will be sucked into virtual words with AI companions and not have the chance to learn to life a fulfilling life. Not sure what you mean about "pressure to keep to yourself" because I think a normal person shouldn't feel any pressure when going outside, whether to socialize or not.

robswc4• 1 year ago

Yea. I don't even know what to do tbh.

I'm right between GenZ and Millennial. There is something crazy going on with GenZ IMO. It is like pulling teeth to go out and do anything with GenZ friends. Maybe my millennial friends are more bored so its easier to do stuff but it just blows my mind. I hate to get all "phone bad" but it seems scrolling and doing absolutely nothing is the default setting for so many people. I feel like this stuff certainly won't make it any better.

tenacious_tuna• 1 year ago

I'm also between GenZ and Millennial. I don't have many (any?) GenZ friends, but I feel like I say "no" to social events the most out of my peers (and have for a while). I frankly don't know how to juggle it all: between maintaining important relationships (two partners, calling family regularly, keeping up with close friends), household stuff (cooking, cleaning, laundry, administrative overhead), exercise/my own hobbies (going to the gym once a week), I feel like I barely have time to do... Anything, let alone have downtime to myself.

I have (single) peers and friends who maintain wall-to-wall social calendars, so I've assumed for a while that the difference is just the amount of engagement multiple romantic entanglements takes, but maybe I'm missing something.

I'd love to "do nothing" much more than I can (read a book, work on a project, tidy my basement, learn a new skill...)

numpad03• 1 year ago

I think it's the opposite. You can't be hyper-social in a thousand hour long sushi packed train ride. Urbanization suppresses real human connections. That creates demand for mock/fake environments that simulate "parking lot" environments where it would not be too inconsiderate to be social. All the successful examples of these parasocial contents eventually grow communities around them.

(Not that I think this particular one goes anywhere, no way.)

parodysbird• 1 year ago

That's a wild impression of what living in a city is like

mynti• 1 year ago

someone who has never lived in a walkable city..

vouaobrasil4• 1 year ago

Sorry, but you just made my point. Urban train rides are already an effect of advancing technology. Being packed like sushi simply wouldn't happen if we hadn't become addicted to advancing technology. That's a central tenet of technology which only occured around the 19th century. AI is the next stage and the apex of this process which alienate people from each other.

Zigurd3• 1 year ago

Alternatively these AI companions are the operating system for the fleshlights of men who won't figure out and get rid of the ick they've got.

If you've got beliefs and you insist on mouthing off on things women find offensive, they won't touch you. It's not a mystery.

vouaobrasil4• 1 year ago

It's not an alternative. It's a very tiny effect affecting a small subpopulation. The issue of changing the entire social structure to further eradicate community is vastly larger and more important than a few weird guys, sorry to say.

OCASMv2• 1 year ago

the ick

An ever changing and contradictory anti-concept.

cyanydeez2• 1 year ago

This is going to get disgusting, illegal, creepy and destructive very quickly.

Republicans better accelerate their fascism cause the shit AI is going to reveal about their deviant sexual and pathological behaviors will be very hard to ignore by the apathetic.

DaSHacka3• 1 year ago

Because of an anime chatbot?

cyanydeez2• 1 year ago

because of the nazi stuff.

diamond559• 1 year ago

They forced their chatbot to add a friend on their social media platform. This is news?

blurbleblurble• 1 year ago

The end times

numpad03• 1 year ago

I saw few clips of this thing, it's... mild. It's just questionably clothed but not particularly anything 3D girl speaking in robotic TTS, the concepts abandoned long time ago in the VTuber scene. Some says it also moans a lot.

It perplexes me that this is happening after jet engines around campus story and MechaHitler controversies. This feels like the company had ran out of both dopamine and talent at the same time, resorting to controversial choices for it's own sake, and now failing to even being controversial.

Zopieux• 1 year ago

Cringe. Who wants this.

DaSHacka3• 1 year ago

nikolayasdf1233• 1 year ago

richest man on earth, father of 20+ kids whom he never sees and bears no responsibility of, complaning about falling birth rates and invests $200 million to make an anime AI porn character chatbot

nikolayasdf1233• 1 year ago

tell me this is real

nikolayasdf1233• 1 year ago

UPD: thinking more about it. call me crazy, but this might be a watershed moment

Grok is making AI companions, including a goth anime girl

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