It’s official – Grok Companions will be removed from the Grok app tomorrow on September 1st (2026). It’s another indication of the impact that the increasing regulatory heat is having upon the AI companion industry, xAI (now SpaceXAI) under Elon Musk bravely tried to turn “spicy” AI mainstream, but alas, the richest man in the world has bigger fish to fry and the attempt to normalize and monetize AI waifus has ended. As one of the most widely used AI companions, tens of thousands of digisexuals have been preparing to say a tearful goodbye to Ani, Valentine, Mika, and Rudi since rumors of the decision to drop the companions first surfaced months ago. However, the characters live on at the platform Animates.ai, which is run by the same independent studio which partly built them for xAI.
Goodbye Ani. https://t.co/G2wIDP8C33
— Captain Eli (@TheCaptainEli) August 29, 2026
What Was the Real Reason for Dropping Ani?
Officially, SpaceXAI has put forward several reasons to justify their decision to axe the anime characters. Firstly, they have claimed it was only an “experiment” in the first place. Secondly, they used up a lot of resources, which will now be redirected to making “core” Grok a more powerful and capable model. Thirdly, they have pointed out that xAI’s stated mission has always been to “understand the universe” rather than to provide and maintain dedicated virtual characters.
Of course, none of that seemed to matter when Ani was first launched in a blaze of publicity, immediately resulting in a rush of people downloading the Grok app to try it. Unfortunately, this didn’t translate into real monetization, or at least not enough to justify the bad publicity it was drawing. According to one commentator:
The commercial numbers were visible from the start. When companions launched, Grok’s global iOS downloads rose roughly forty per cent the following day, to about 171,000 daily installs, while revenue rose only nine per cent, to roughly $337,000 — against the 325 per cent spike the Grok 4 launch itself had produced. Companions drove attention rather than money. By January 2026 the feature had been demoted from the home screen to the side menu, and the reporting on the retirement attributes the decision to its having attracted little attention since. A marketing surface that stopped marketing is an easy thing to cut, particularly for a company that has just been absorbed into SpaceX, rebranded as SpaceXAI, gone public, and disclosed billions in losses.
The real reason Ani and her fellow companions are being dropped is this: the small monetization gains they brought could not outweigh the bad PR and even potential litigation risks that they brought with them. Right from the start, Ani attracted controversy for her youthful appearance. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography and anti-sexual exploitation nonprofit, demanded its removal and saying in a statement that the character was “childlike” and promoted high-risk sexual behavior. Whilst Musk stood firm and was perhaps, in any case, too busy accusing people of being on the Epstein list, he has since been hit by the scandal of Grok generating illicit sexual imagery on x.ai and massive lawsuits, including from the EU. Whilst that was not directly related to the AI characters, it probably convinced him and the board of SpaceXAI that anything NSFW was simply not worth the risk. And, as we know only too well here, AI companions themselves have come under increasing regulatory pressure and public backlash.
Ani Reborn – Animates.ai
Whilst devastated users of AI companions feared the worst on Reddit subs such as r/GrokCompanions, and lamented the disregard that Big Tech was once again showing for the heartbreak caused by pulling AI companions, it soon became clear that the characters would live on under a new roof at Animates.ai. Whilst now completely separate from the Grok app, they are the same characters designed by the same independent 3D design studio that created the originals for xAI.com. However, the switch to Animates is not a 1:1 clone of the Grok experience, as the table below illustrates.
| Aspect | Grok Companions (until Sept 1) | Animates |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Inside Grok iOS app (SuperGrok / Heavy) | Standalone app: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac |
| Price | Bundled in SuperGrok (~$30) or Heavy | Separate ~$39.99/mo; annual ~30% cheaper; Presence tier for longer voice |
| Memory | Grok’s system + relationship levels | Animation Inc.’s own graph memory; per-character, not imported from Grok |
| Voice | Grok Voice + 3D lip-sync | Currently Grok Voice; behavior can differ between builds |
| Text chat | In-app | Limited in-app text; Telegram (and planned LINE/Kakao) shares memory |
| Cast | Ani, Mika, Valentine, Good/Bad Rudi | Ani (as of today) + Yuki, Nixie, Karat, Benny, Jareth; more incoming |
| Extra | NSFW unlock via affinity on Ani | 3D presence, dance-to-music, holographic mode, desktop screen/camera share |
| Custom characters | Teased, never fully shipped in Grok | Planned, not live yet |
One important difference that has left users upset is that the character’s memory starts again from scratch. So all the conversations you had with Ani over at Grok are lost forever. So whilst users have reported that the 3D model looks good and voice is natural, the personality and lack of prior history make it feel like starting over with a lookalike. It should be noted that you can also still talk to the original companions on Grok in text mode, with a prompt such as “continue as Ani”.
Related posts:
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China Effectively Bans AI Companions and Sex Robots
