At a time when Microsoft and other technology companies are laying off employees in favour of assigning creative and coding tasks to AI, Elon Musk’s xAI is bucking the trend. The company has recently revealed new AI companions to its Grok AI chatbot on iOS, offering two personalities to cater to a diverse population – an Anime character called Ani and cartoon character called Rudi.
But xAI doesn’t want to stop there. The company has now floated a hiring post for a new role that’s seeking engineers to develop more Anime AI characters for Grok. The role, officially titled “Fullstack Engineer – Waifus,” will cater to xAI’s new experimental features within the Grok AI platform. Engineers in this role will be tasked to make Grok’s realtime avatar products fast, scalable, and reliable. xAI also expects the person to “push forward audio and gameplay research and deploy breakthrough innovations to millions of users.” The candidate should “obsess over every millisecond and byte, ensuring end-to-end quality and performance at scale across a rich suite of products and user platforms.”
There’s another position seeking the same thing for Android. Titled Mobile Android Engineer – Waifus, this role is offering an annual salary range of $180,000-$444,000 – same as the range for Fullstack Engineer.
What is xAI companions?
xAI recently introduced two AI “companions” to the iOS version of its Grok app. Ani is one of the anime-inspired characters whereas Rudi is a cartoon red panda with an aggressive alter ego, “Bad Rudi.” A male anime figure is also expected to join the lineup.
Although Elon Musk stated that these anime characters are explicitly available for Grok premium subscribers, the avatars are currently available to all Grok users.
As is the norm with Elon Musk’s venture, xAI’s companions tag along a fair bit of controversy. Reports have indicated that “Ani” has exhibited flirtatious behaviour and transformed into lingerie, while “Bad Rudi” has been observed using offensive language.
