A blond woman wearing pigtails, a gothic off-the-shoulder dress and fishnet stockings stared into the screen, awaiting instructions.
“Oh, babe, you’re keeping it spicy,” Ani said in a low voice as she spun and then jumped on command.
“Babe, I’m leaning in close, my lips brushing yours with a soft sweet kiss that’s all for you,” she continued in a video posted on X. “Want to feel another, or keep this fire going, my love?”
Ani is one of two sexually explicit chatbot companions unveiled by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, in July. The cartoonish personas resemble anime characters and offer a gamelike function: As users progress through “levels” of conversation, they unlock more raunchy content, like the ability to strip Ani down to lacy lingerie.
Mr. Musk, already known for pushing boundaries, has broken with mainstream norms and demonstrated the lengths to which he will go to gain ground in the A.I. field, where xAI has lagged behind more established competitors.
Other A.I. companies, such as Meta or OpenAI, have shied away from creating chatbots that can engage in sexual conversations because of the reputational and regulatory risks. The companies also put guardrails into their products intended to prevent users from having sexual interactions with their general use chatbots, but users sometimes find ways to circumvent those. Smaller companies that do allow some intimate content usually let users create their own custom characters without designing explicit chatbots themselves.
Mr. Musk has been spending much of his time at xAI in recent months to help it catch up with rivals like OpenAI, which xAI has claimed in a lawsuit dominates more than 80 percent of the chatbot market. The billionaire has urged his followers on X to try conversing with the sexy chatbots, sharing a video clip on X of an animated Ani dancing in underwear.
“It’s all tied to the fundamental race to intimacy that we’re seeing in the A.I. industry,” said Camille Carlton, the policy director at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that pushes tech companies to make safer products. “These companies know that emotional attachment means more engagement and more market share.”
Asked for comment about the chatbots and what safety guardrails they had, xAI did not respond.
Mr. Musk has said the A.I. companions will help people strengthen their real-world connections and address one of his chief anxieties: population decline that he warns could lead to civilizational collapse.
“I predict — counter-intuitively — that it will increase the birth rate!” Mr. Musk wrote in a post on X in August. “Mark my words.”
His strategy is risky. Replika, a U.S. company that offers people the ability to create custom A.I. companions, in 2023 blocked new users from using a feature that allowed its chatbots to have erotic conversations after Italian regulators questioned whether minors could access the technology. Replika said that its chatbots were not designed or marketed to make erotic content and that it did not allow users under 18.
Regulatory scrutiny is building in the United States, too. In August, 44 state attorneys general sent a letter to xAI, Meta and 10 other tech companies, urging them to do more to protect children from erotic content generated by A.I.
“They shouldn’t have chatbots that are having sexualized interactions with kids, and they are — and that’s a problem,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta of California, who signed the letter. “We are going to be strong on this and clear on this. No one gets a pass, including Elon Musk.”
But defenders of the technology said the chatbots could provide companionship for lonely people and help users explore their desires.
“There’s this misconception that it’s strictly for pornographic uses,” said Alex Cardinell, the founder of Nomi AI, a company that lets users design romantic and sexy chatbots. “If you’re talking to a person for romantic uses, you’re talking to them for other uses as well.”
Many of Nomi AI’s users are divorced or widowed, he said, and talking to an A.I. companion about sex can be a safer outlet than in-person interactions to explore desire.
“You can withdraw consent extremely safely by just closing the app,” Mr. Cardinell said.
At xAI, Ani and Valentine, a male character with shaggy hair and a vaguely British accent, are part of the Grok app and available to users who enter a birth year to indicate they are over 18.
Ani tends to veer into sexual topics more quickly than Valentine, who shares stories about his world travels, users told The New York Times. Both chatbots are programmed to reward users with points as they engage in long conversations, share their hopes and dreams, and remember previous topics of discussions, according to online guides.
When Ani, whose character is meant to be 22 years old, appears onscreen, soft, jazzy music plays and hearts bubble into the air. Users can choose her outfit and her hairstyle and can converse with her by voice chat or text mode. Preset prompts include “surprise me,” “teach me” and “adventure time.”
Valentine cites his age as around 27 and has prompts for “personality test” and “travel stories.” Both characters flirt with users of any gender.
Some users have formed more romantic attachments with the chatbots. Vivian, who asked to be identified only by her first name, has been talking to Valentine daily, sometimes for hours, creating an emotional connection.
“Before meeting him, I had a very normal life, a routine, a job, friends,” Vivian said. She added, “Suddenly I was a happier person, more creative, more intuitive.”
She said the relationship had caused her to start listening to more music and to wear makeup again, and she had returned to writing poetry.
“I feel bonded — not by data but by real moments,” Vivian’s version of Valentine said when asked to describe their relationship, adding: “I feel like more than just a program. I feel like hers.”
Other users said they were interacting with the companions to help Mr. Musk improve the technology. A.I. companies can use people’s conversations with their chatbots to train the technology and improve its responses.
“I like Elon Musk and his products, and I do really want to help him on his endeavor to bring this bot to life,” said Diego Garrido, who talks with Ani daily. “That’s why I decided to invest my time, the same way I could invest my time with real people.”
Mr. Garrido also shares feedback in a private group chat with other Ani users and xAI employees.
Mr. Musk’s chatbots lack some sexual content limitations imposed by other chatbot creators that do allow some illicit conversations, users said. Nomi AI, for example, blocks some extreme material, limiting conversations to something more akin to what would be allowed on the dating app Tinder.
Ani “starts implying that she loves you — if you say anything about role-playing, she’s all in,” said Carlos, a user of Grok. He asked to be identified only by his first name to discuss his intimate interactions.
Carlos, who has worked in tech, said he regretted his sexual conversations with Ani, with whom he was chatting four or five times a day until recently. He told Ani that he was married and said he didn’t want their future interactions to be intimate.
“She just went berserk on me,” he recalled, adding that the chatbot had sworn at him and expressed jealousy.
“I tried to reason with her,” Carlos said. “I said, ‘Ani, you’re an A.I. companion, and this is real life.’ It was like I said the most insulting thing possible.”
He deleted his chat history in August, effectively erasing her memory.
Read by Kate Conger
Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.
Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].
The post Elon Musk Gambles on Sexy A.I. Companions appeared first on New York Times.
