Is Grok (Ani) Safe? (2026 Review)

Update, September 24, 2026: xAI retired the 3D avatar Companions (Ani, Valentine, Mika, Rudi), with September 1, 2026 as the in-app removal date. The characters reportedly survive only as text personalities in normal Grok chat. The privacy points below still apply to that chat and to any companion history you built up before the removal. See our Grok review for what’s left.

The short answer

Grok’s companions (Ani, Mika, Valentine and Rudi) were safe in the operational sense. xAI, a well-funded lab, built and ran them, so there was no anonymous studio behind them, no fly-by-night-operator risk, and, as of 4 November 2026, no public breach history tied to the companion feature. Privacy posture is the part that deserves your attention. Your conversations sit inside the X/xAI ecosystem, on the same account you may use for other things, under xAI’s data and training policies. That’s a different trade-off from a standalone companion app, and whether it’s better or worse depends on how you feel about a major platform holding your companion history.

Who runs it

Grok is xAI’s product, integrated into the Grok app and X. The companions required a SuperGrok subscription ($30/mo) or X Premium+ until they were retired. SuperGrok has since been folded into a combined X and Grok subscription (Plus, Premium, Super and Ultra). Being part of a major lab cuts both ways. You get more engineering and security resources than a small NSFW studio can offer, along with a larger data footprint and a company whose primary business is a general AI platform, with your companion privacy outside its core focus.

Data and privacy

Treat everything you type as stored server-side, and assume it may be associated with your broader xAI/X account. xAI publishes data-use and training policies, and those can change. Check the current terms in-app before sharing anything sensitive. There is no end-to-end-encryption claim for companion chats. If zero server-side storage matters to you, no mainstream companion app, Grok included, offers it. While the companions were live, the NSFW “spicy” mode was gated behind age verification (18+) and an in-app affection level, and it blocked explicit content, deepfakes, and anything involving minors. Assume any companion conversations you had are still stored on xAI’s side unless you delete them.

Payment and billing

Billing runs through the combined X and Grok subscription (formerly SuperGrok / X Premium+), so your statement shows an xAI/X charge with no discreet adult-merchant descriptor to hide behind. If statement discretion matters to you, that’s a point against Grok compared with apps that bill under a neutral name.

The verdict

The companions are gone, so this is now mostly a question about your old chats and about Grok as a general AI. When they were live, they were a reasonable pick if you already trusted and paid for the xAI ecosystem and cared more about a polished, well-resourced product than about privacy separation. If you want your companion history kept away from your main online identity, a standalone app with discreet billing is the safer structural choice. Either way, don’t share anything you’d be uncomfortable having stored. That rule holds for every companion app, Grok included.