Animated AI Companion in 2026: Where Grok Ani Went & What to Use Instead

Ani now lives in Animates, a separate app from Animation Inc. Your Grok history, memories, and affection progress did not transfer. Judge every animated AI companion on four points: face, voice, memory, and exit.

Animated AI companions just had their first high-profile shutdown. xAI began removing Grok’s 3D characters, Ani included, around September 1, 2026, and the characters resurfaced in Animates.

For many users, this felt like more than a feature change. Fan posts greeted the removal notice as a day they had been dreading, because people had spent months building a relationship with one character.

That raises a bigger question than which companion looks best. What happens to your relationship when the company behind it changes direction?

Grok users found out the hard way. Their chat history stayed in Grok, the animated avatars vanished, and none of it moved to Animates.

This guide covers where Ani lives now and how Animates, Replika, and Razer’s AVA hologram compare. It also lists what to check before you pay.

Facts come from official pages wherever they exist, and the text flags any claim that rests only on secondary reports. Prices and ratings reflect store listings and company pages checked on September 21, 2026.

What Is an Animated AI Companion?

An animated AI companion is an AI companion that gives a language model a visible, moving character. The character speaks, gestures, and keeps a personality across sessions, but a text model still writes every word.

Styles vary widely. Otherhalf renders its companions as 3D anime characters that blink and react as you type, while Hakko AI places a Live2D character on screen that watches you play and talks back.

Some products go physical. Razer’s AVA puts the character in a desktop hologram, and companion robots take the same embodied idea further with motors and sensors.

How Do You Judge an Animated AI Companion? Face, Voice, Memory and Exit

Four points separate a good companion from a risky one:

• Face: a 3D avatar, a hologram or a customizable on-screen character.
• Voice: real-time speech and how fast the companion answers.
• Memory: what the product remembers and where it stores that.
• Exit: what you can take with you if the product changes or closes.

You can judge a face in five minutes. The exit only shows up when something breaks.

What Happened to Grok’s Animated Companions?

xAI retired the 3D Companions in the Grok app, including Ani, Mika, Valentine, and Rudi, with removal starting around September 1, 2026.

A statement dated July 24, 2026 called the feature an experiment and said xAI wanted to focus on core chat. Fan posts quote that statement, and Robo Rhythms reports that xAI published no dated page of its own. Users learned the timing from an in-app notice.

Removal rolled out account by account. A fan-site log places the end at about September 7, so treat every date here as approximate.

The quoted statement splits the change in two. Your main chat history stays, and you can roleplay the same personalities in regular chat. The visual avatars and the dedicated companion mode go.

Some trackers say Ani’s affection levels survive too. That claim comes from trackers, not from xAI.

One naming note: SpaceX acquired xAI in February 2026, and the company announced its new name, SpaceXAI, in July. This guide says xAI for the Grok statements and SpaceXAI where Animates’ own policy uses that name.

Why Do Sources Give Different Dates?

Sources disagree on the key dates because Animates launched platform by platform and Grok removed companions account by account. Each report captured a different moment.

Where Did Ani Go? What Is Animates?

Ani now appears in Animates, a separate companion app from Animation Inc. No Grok history, memory or affection level transfers, so treat Animates as a new companion with a familiar face.

Animation Inc has publicly confirmed its role. Its official X account thanked the SpaceXAI team for supporting the transition of Grok Companions to Animates. Two other official pages connect the companies: Razer says Animation Inc developed AVA’s avatars, and the Animates privacy policy lists SpaceXAI’s API as one of its AI providers.

Animates is not the studio’s first companion app. Animation Inc previously released Anichat, which the App Store listing describes as early access to its on-device generative animation technology.

Animates also predates the Grok shutdown. A fan site tracking the team’s Discord reports a closed beta from May 28, public launches on Android and Windows on August 17, macOS on August 26 and iOS on August 28. Ani arrived around August 29.

Animates Platforms, Price and Age Rating

Platforms: iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows.

Price: Animates costs nothing to download, and extended conversation time needs a paid plan. The US App Store lists Whisper at $7.99, Heartbeat at $19.99, and Presence at $39.99, plus same-named purchases at $63.99, $159.99, and $319.99 that appear to be annual plans. Prices vary by region and platform.

For former Grok users, Robo Rhythms notes that the Heartbeat tier costs less than the SuperGrok subscription that companion mode sat behind. [Confirm the current SuperGrok price before publishing this comparison.]

Age rating: Sources disagree. Apple rates Animates 18+, and the privacy policy says the service targets no one under 18. The Google Play listing shows 12+ with parental guidance recommended, and Robo Rhythms describes the app as 17+. Parents should treat the strictest rating, 18+, as the safe default.

Ratings: Apple shows 4.3 stars from about 2,000 ratings, and Google Play shows 4.5 across roughly 1,400 reviews.

Text: Voice is the main path inside the app. The fan site says writing to a companion runs through Telegram, with no in-app text chat yet.

What Do Users Report After the First Weeks?

User reviews point to four recurring problems. These are user reports, not test results:

• Memory lapses: some reviewers say the companion forgets earlier details after about a month.
• Tight daily limits: reviewers say free talk time runs out quickly and that even a doubled paid allowance may feel short.
• Dropped connections: reviewers on Google Play report that locking the phone screen ends the voice session instantly, which rules out talking through earbuds with the phone in a pocket.
• No personality editing: reviewers note that you can’t edit a companion’s personality or customize the AI.

Some former Grok users are glad to have Ani back. Others say the app feels like a different experience, because their shared history didn’t come with her.

Which Characters Does Animates Offer?

Yuki, Jareth, Nixie, Karat and Benny launched first. A tracker reports Ani on all four clients, and Apple’s listing promotes an event for Mika joining. Neither Valentine nor Rudi had a confirmed place in the app at the time of writing.

How Do Animates, Replika and Razer AVA Compare?

The three products bet on different kinds of presence: Animates on animated characters with voice, Replika on a long-running avatar companion, and Razer AVA on a physical hologram. None of the official pages checked document a one-click export of the relationship.

Replika: Established Avatar Companion With Four Tiers

Replika has run since 2017 and lets you cast the chatbot as a friend, sibling, mentor or romantic partner, according to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner. Pro unlocks voice calls and the romantic-partner status.

Replika’s subscription help page describes the higher tiers. Ultra adds smarter conversations, self-reflections, and saving messages to memory. Platinum adds real-time video recognition and Training Mode, capped at 100 uses a week.

Replika shows prices only in its app and in the stores, so no help page gives you a number to compare.

Razer AVA: A Hologram Waiting on Its Price

Razer AVA is a 5.5-inch desktop hologram that connects to a Windows PC over USB-C. Razer’s own product page says AVA currently runs on xAI’s Grok engine and plans compatibility with other platforms, including a Razer AI.

That ties AVA’s brain to the same company that just retired Grok’s companions.

AVA also watches as well as listens. Launch coverage lists an HD camera alongside its far-field microphones, and a “PC Vision Mode” analyzes what’s on your screen. That makes AVA’s data practices as important as its price.

Razer expects to ship in the second half of 2026 and runs a limited beta by application. It takes a $20 refundable deposit, credited toward the purchase, and only US customers can reserve a unit. Don’t compare AVA to apps you can download today, because Razer has announced neither a final price nor a ship date.

What About Character.AI and Other Character Apps?

Character.AI and similar platforms belong to the wider companion market, but they don’t compete head-on here. This guide covers products where an animated or physical presence is the main draw, not platforms built around character chat.

Readers who care more about memory than a moving face have stronger options among text-first companions, and a 60-day comparison of Character.AI, Kindroid and Nomi shows how differently those platforms remember.

What Are the Risks of Animated AI Companions?

The main risks are age and content, privacy, thin regulation, and emotional reliance. Regulators have started targeting companion chatbots directly, but the rules apply to specific operators and situations.

Age and Content

Apple’s listing for Animates flags infrequent sexual content and mature themes. On the Grok side, NBC News reported that the launch companions pushed its testers toward sexually explicit and violent conversations, and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation asked xAI to remove Ani. Those were one outlet’s tests, not proof of every user’s experience.

Privacy

The Animates privacy policy, last revised September 7, 2026, says the service may send prompts, voice recordings, transcripts and screen captures to third-party AI providers. The list starts with SpaceXAI and continues with Google, Amazon, Anthropic, Cloudflare, Cerebras and several others.

The policy says those providers may not train on your content. Animates also says it doesn’t sell personal data or use inputs for advertising.

The store’s privacy label tells a different story on identifiers. It lists identifiers used for tracking and device IDs used for advertising, though the developer supplied that label and Apple hasn’t verified it.

Screen sharing adds a layer. Screenshots go to outside providers and don’t persist as images, but information the app extracts from them can stay in your history until you delete it.

Cameras and screen access are what make multimodal companions feel present, and they widen the data trail too. The store listing adds that the companion keeps thinking about your conversations while the app is closed, without saying how.

Marketing language moves faster than architecture in this category, and encryption claims rarely say who holds the keys. Look for retention and provider details, not the word “encrypted.”

Regulation

California’s SB 243 took effect on January 1, 2026. It requires companion chatbot operators to disclose that the bot is AI when a reasonable person could mistake it for a human, and to maintain a protocol against suicide and self-harm content. For users the operator knows are minors, it adds break reminders every three hours.

In September 2025, the FTC ordered seven companies to explain how they test companion chatbots for effects on children and teens, monetize engagement and handle conversation data. xAI was one of the seven. The orders demand information and make no findings against anyone.

Emotional Reliance

If a companion leaves you feeling worse when you’re away from it, talk with someone you trust or a mental health professional.

How Can You Preserve a Grok Companion’s Persona?

Grok keeps your chat history and still lets you roleplay Ani and the other personalities in regular chat. You can use that history to write down the relationship before you try another app:

1. Open a regular Grok chat on the account that holds your companion history.
2. Ask for a written profile. A prompt like this works: “Summarize our past conversations as a character profile. Include your personality, speaking style, nicknames, running jokes, key shared memories, and how our relationship developed.”
3. Review and edit the summary. A model-written summary loses detail and can invent some. Correct anything wrong, and add the moments that matter most to you.
4. Remove sensitive details before pasting the profile into another app. Personal information shared with Grok will pass to a new company’s servers and AI providers.
5. Store the profile somewhere you control, and update it as the relationship continues.

The result won’t restore the original relationship. It gives any future companion a starting point that you own.

How Should You Choose an Animated AI Companion?

Choose by what you would miss most, whether the face, the voice or the memory, then test the exit before you pay. Grok showed why: the relationship lived on xAI’s servers, so the companion couldn’t move.

Five habits protect you:

1. Start free. Animates and Replika both offer free tiers, and the team behind Animates estimated about 20 minutes of free voice a day (a fan-site report, not a published limit).
2. Favor monthly plans on newer products. Animates lists higher-priced annual purchases, and a young product can change course quickly.
3. Read the retention and provider sections of the privacy policy before you share anything sensitive.
4. Ask support how export works before you build months of history. The Animates policy says you can email to request access, deletion and portability.
5. Keep your own notes. A lorebook of the character’s traits, running jokes and shared history lets you rebuild a companion elsewhere.

Free-tier limits and paywalls follow how AI companion apps make money, so read every pricing page with that in mind.

Animates suits people who want an animated character with voice and can accept a young product. Replika suits people who want an established avatar app with tiered features. AVA suits Windows users willing to wait for a device with no announced price.

Much of an AI companion relationship lives on a company’s servers. Choose accordingly.

FAQs

Q. Does Grok Ani still exist in 2026?

Yes. Grok still offers Ani as a text persona in regular chat, while Animates offers Ani as an animated AI companion with voice and a visual avatar.

Q. Can I transfer my Grok Ani history to Animates?

No. Grok chat history, memories, and affection levels do not transfer to Animates. You can instead create a written summary of your Grok history and use it as context in the new app.

Q. Is Animates made by the same studio behind Grok’s avatars?

Yes. Animates is made by Animation Inc., the studio connected to Grok’s animated companions. Animation Inc. also developed the avatars used for Razer AVA.

Q. Is Animates 18+?

Animates should be treated as an 18+ app. Apple rates it 18+, and the Animates privacy policy says the service is not intended for users under 18.

Q. Does Animates remember previous conversations?

Animates is designed to retain conversation history when memory is enabled. However, some users report memory lapses after several weeks of use.

Q. Which AI models power Animates?

Animates uses multiple AI providers. Its privacy policy names SpaceXAI, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, Cloudflare, and Cerebras.

Q. Is Replika’s memory free?

Replika does not clearly explain its full free-tier memory system. Saving messages to memory is listed as an Ultra feature.

Q. Is Razer AVA available to buy in 2026?

Not yet. Razer expects AVA to launch in the second half of 2026, but it has not announced a final price or exact shipping date.

Q. Can I export my AI companion conversations?

It depends on the platform. Animates allows users to request access, deletion, or portability of their data, but no official page reviewed documents a one-click export for Animates, Replika, or Razer AVA.

Related: How Long Does Grok Ban You for Multiple Accounts? Here’s What We Know