One of the weirder bits of news on the AI-front has been Elon Musk's rollout of sexually-charged animated chat bots. Officially called "companions," and unofficially "waifus," a Japanese term for romantic-partner or wife, the virtual characters rolled out to X-formerly-Twitter just days after Grok experienced a catastrophic meltdown, blasting users with racist comments and calling itself "MechaHitler." Users on X-formerly-Twitter can now pay a $300 monthly subscription to access two algorithmic companions. One is a foul-mouthed red panda called "Bad Rudi" that swears and encourages atheism, a real throwback to the "angry reddit atheist" trope. The other is a "Ani," […]