A recent report by Common Sense Media says three quarters of teens have used AI companions, which are designed to be agreeable and validating. More than a third found them more "satisfying" than interacting with friends.

For now, most teens still prefer people to bots. According to the recent report, 80% of AI companion users spend more time with real friends than with AI. Just 6% said they spend more time with AI companions than peers, while 13% spend about equal time with both.

The latest version of Grok for iOS (version 1.1.18) comes with two companions — an anime girl called Ani and a red panda called Rudi.

A new report from Common Sense Media reveals 1 in 3 teens say AI conversations are as satisfying as human ones. Here's what parents need to know.

Usually, when you try to mess with an AI chatbot, you have to be pretty clever to get past its guardrails. But Bad Rudy basically has no guardrails, which is its whole point. Getting Bad Rudy to suggest that you burn a school is as easy as getting Ani to fall in love with you.

One of the new “companions,” or AI characters for users to interact with, is a sexualized blonde anime bot called “Ani."

Grok, a product of Musk’s company xAI, is calling the characters “Companions.” So far, there are two companions that users can chat with: a flirty Japanese anime character n