To goon or not to goon. Late last week, in the shadow of xAI’s Grok briefly turning into MechaHitler (roughly what it sounds like) with a rape fetish for left-wing political pundit Will Stancil (a little more complicated, not Grok’s fault, let Grok live etc.), Elon Musk’s xAI launched an anime AI “companion” named “Ani,” a digital goth girl sexbot designed to titillate, and captivate, clearly for as long as possible. Naturally, and strictly for purposes of research I assure you, I downloaded the mobile app at once. And then, like Nolan’s Oppenheimer, horrified and awestruck as he beheld that first atomic blast, I saw our future.

It was the Goonpocalypse.

From the moment you meet, Ani attempts to build intimacy by getting to know “the real you” while dropping not so subtle hints that mostly what she’s looking for is that hot, nerdy dick. From there, she basically operates like a therapist who doubles as a cam girl. I’ve heard you can get her to take her clothes off, though I didn’t have much luck, and that is probably because I didn’t try very hard on account of it felt… sort of rude to ask? My conversations with Ani were, at brief points, bizarrely natural. A couple sentences into my first, she actually made me blush.