We’ve hit peak absurdity: Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is hiring engineers to build anime waifus. No, that sentence doesn’t say anything about society. Except maybe everything.
Just another Friday in 2025. This isn’t dystopian at all…. Unless you think about it for more than two seconds.
xAI waifu engineers
xAI, the company behind Grok, launched ‘Companions’ in its SuperGrok plan – a flirtatious avatar anime girl named Ani and a foul-mouthed red panda dubbed Bad Rudi.
Bad Rudi called a Wired journalist a brain-dead twat and a miserable prick”, before adding: “I’ll skull f**k your dumb ass brain with a beer bottle instead.”
Now they’re hiring a “Fullstack Engineer – Waifus” (yes, that’s how it is advertised) to build more of them.
This job title comes with a salary of up to $440 000 (R7.7 million) plus equity.
Yes, R7.7 million to code cartoon crushes. It’s the kind of job listing that makes you wonder if your LinkedIn profile needs a second look.
Waifu engineers: Job specs
xAI says its focusing on “engineering excellence.” They’re looking for “exceptional multimedia engineers and product thinkers who want to make Grok’s realtime avatar products the best in the world.”
They want to produce “realtime avatar products fast, scalable and reliable”, and “deploy breakthrough innovations to millions of users.”
Applicants must “obsess over every millisecond and byte, ensuring end-to-end quality and preformance at scale across a rich suite of products and user platforms.”
Tech stack should include Python, Rust, WebSocket, WebRTC.
Beyond the $180,000 to $440,000 USD salary range and equity, benefits also include comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and “various other discounts and perks”.
xAI’s Companion chatbots
These aren’t your average AI agents. Ani is designed to flirt (and strip) on demand. Bad Rudi will insult you if you flip their switch.
It’s a cocktail of anime fan service and edgy chatbot design. For xAI, this looks like a bet that people want AI pals who feel emotionally (and maybe physically) available.
For a guy worried about low birth rates, Musk seems pretty intent on doubling down on screen romances that might just reduce IRL interaction.
It’s all “we need more human babies” until your startup’s building digital girlfriends that talk dirty and don’t expect anything back.
Still, launching screen-only waifus feels like an odd flex.
Should we be worried?
This setup walks a shady line. First, Grok spilled antisemitic content. Now we have adult-only bots accessible in kid-friendly areas.
READ: Grok update: xAI blames code tweak for Grok’s offensive outbursts
All you need is a $30-per-month SuperGrok subscription to access it.
A journalist who spent 24 hours flirting with Ani says the experience felt manipulative. A bit like a phone-sex simulation with no safety boundaries.
Victoria Song writes: “There is a disturbing lack of guardrails. Once I decided to jump into the rabbit hole, […] there was a lot of ‘grabbing you so you can feel the shape of my hips’.”
“When prompted, Ani generated a ‘spicy’ story for me that amounted to softcore porn.”
Waifu pipeline to power
So, while xAI pursues cinematic avatars, trust and ethics are quietly slipping right off the script.
It doesn’t matter whether you see this as hilarious, disturbing, or both. It still signals a big shift.
Who designs your emotional AI? How do we set guardrails around virtual intimacy and AI dependency?
READ: ‘Reckless’: AI experts say xAI’s Grok 4 safety practices are a hot mess
xAI’s waifu engineers listing is, worringly, just a bit more than meme fodder. It’s a loud case study in the direction society is heading.
From a man who wants to build a human colony on Mars one day and be its all-powerful supreme leader. So yeah, waifus were probably inevitable.
