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Observers are unsure if the US military leadership will take advantage of a scantily clad anime girl or a cartoon panda.
Just a week after Grok went insane and praised Adolf Hitler during a lengthy anti-woke tirade, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot is getting a new feature – AI companions.
Subscribers to SuperGrok can now go into settings and turn on the companions feature, choosing either a cartoon red panda or a bouncy anime girl to keep them company. A third companion, which looks to be a brooding anime boy, is apparently coming soon.
“We will make this easier to turn on in a few days,” Musk said in a 15 July post to his social media platform.
“Just wanted to do a soft launch to make sure things are stable and working well.”
When users reach level three in their “relationship” with Ani, the anime girl, they can even turn on a not-safe-for-work mode where she ditches her goth get-up for black lingerie.
Rudy, the cartoon panda, does not appear to have an NSFW mode, thankfully, though no doubt to the despair of furries everywhere.
While Grok users were getting to know their new artificial friends, the Pentagon signed a US$200 million contract with Musk’s xAI to roll out its Grok for government program throughout the Department of Defence. Similar contracts have also been awarded to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.
“The adoption of AI is transforming the department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” chief digital and AI officer Dr Doug Matty of the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said in a 14 July statement.
“Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.”
xAI describes Grok for government as a “suite of frontier AI products” that will be available to all levels of US government customers and will include Grok 4, Deep Search, and Tool Use, alongside unique offerings, including custom national security models, custom applications for healthcare and science, and models designed for classified environments.
“America is the world leader in AI, and this is in no small part due to a tradition of innovation and strong investments in engineering and science,” an xAI spokesperson said in a statement.
“We’re excited to contribute back to the country that made xAI uniquely possible here.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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