AI Desktop Pet — Local-LLM 3D Desktop Companion (Steam)
Local-LLM 3D desktop companion with VRM avatars and screen vision, $12.99 on Steam. The strongest ‘can’t be taken away’ story in the desktop lane — setup friction and one-dev risk included.
Library
The Library
Every research dossier, comparison table, and timeline behind the guides — 68 records, each with its dated evidence and UNVERIFIED flags intact.
68 of 68 records
AI2U: With You 'Til The End — 3D AI-Native Companion Game (Steam)
The social-proof leader of the Steam lane: AI-native 3D companion game, about 1,995 Steam reviews at 84/100, full release August 2026. $14.99 once — the trustworthy purchase, if you want a game.
AIBI Pocket — ChatGPT-powered pocket companion robot (Living.AI)
The only pocketable ChatGPT companion robot with a 2026 owner record — honestly split between adorable and half-broken. Buy expecting a charming beta through a retailer with real returns.
AIKO: AI Girlfriend 3D Life (olympus studio)
Indie 3D life-sim companion: body sliders, persistent memory, no subscription, 500K+ downloads. The best pay-once value in the niche — with Early Access jank and slow AI as the honest caveats.
AITuber Kit — Open-Source 3D AI-Character Framework
Open-source 3D AI-character framework — the builder’s kit behind the AITuber wave. For developers, not companion seekers.
AltspaceVR (Microsoft) [SHUTDOWN — VERIFIED]
Microsoft shut its social-VR platform March 10, 2023, pivoting to workplace Mesh. Platform consolidation kills ecosystems — and the companions that lived in them.
Anam — Real-Time Interactive Avatar API
API-first real-time avatar platform: the default pick when the avatar IS the product interface. Realism leader, dinged on WebRTC reliability under bad networks.
Animates — Life Companions (Animation Inc.)
Launched around August 2026 and inherited Grok’s companion refugees (Ani, Mika). Real-time voice 3D anime chat with tiered memory pricing — newest premium contender, no long-term owner verdicts yet.
Animora — AI-Generated 3D Companion (Steam, 2026)
2026 Steam entrant: prompt-to-3D-companion, 8 reviews at 25% positive. Warning label — you’re paying to be someone else’s QA department.
Charisma.ai — Interactive Storytelling Character Engine
The writer’s-room alternative to Convai: interactive storytelling with plot-heavy character arcs. Weaker as a real-time embodied 3D presence.
ChatReal: 3D AI Chat Character
Obscure Android 3D AI companion: live and maintained, thin but real community signal. The long tail, documented.
ChatWaifu — Offline 3D Voice Companion (Steam)
Offline 3D anime voice companion for user-imported GGUF models, $3.99. Privacy-maximalist pick: everything runs on your machine.
China July 2026 AI-Companion Crackdown — The Largest Mass Companion Shutdown on Record
On July 15, 2026, China’s AI-companion regulations took effect — the largest mass companion shutdown ever recorded. Product quality is irrelevant when the rules change overnight.
China 3D Companions — Xiaoice and the July 2026 Regulatory Shock
Xiaoice and the Chinese 3D companion landscape after July 2026: the social pulse shifted from product fandom to shutdown risk — which companions survive, not which are best.
Death-Adjacent Controversies 2024–2026 — Pivots, Breaches, and Acqui-Hires
The death-adjacent files: Inflection’s acqui-hire, Character.AI’s founders exiting to Google, the Muah.AI breach. The acqui-hire is the new shutdown.
Convai — 3D Conversational Character Platform
The fastest path from idea to talking 3D character in Unity/Unreal — strongest dev mindshare, recurring complaints about latency, shallow characters, and credit economics.
DeepBrain AI — AI Studios & AI Human (Conversational Avatar)
Async video rendering (2–5 minutes), not a real-time 3D engine — retained for seed accountability, reclassified. Do not shortlist it as a companion builder.
Desktop Maid — Free VRM Desktop Companion with Group Chat (Steam)
Free real-time VRM desktop companion with proactive AI group chat — characters talking to each other, a novelty nothing else in the lane does. 52% Mixed: scrappy indie utility, not a polished product.
ECOVACS LilMilo — plush AI emotional companion robot (ECOVACS, 2026)
ECOVACS’s plush AI emotional companion robot, launched May 2026 — but with no owners, no teardowns, and a $599/$799.99 price conflict. A press story with a launch date, not yet a reviewed product.
Embodied Moxie — The $799 Kids' Companion Robot That Died Twice (2024–2026)
The $799 kids’ companion robot: Embodied collapsed December 2024, the revival closed in 2026. A robot children bond with has no graceful end-of-life.
EVE – AI 伴侣 (Nature Select / 自然选择)
China’s post-regulation 3D companion: real-time 3D calls, 14,202 ratings at 3.28★, RMB 68–328/month tiers. The clearest live pick in China — approach as an experiment, not a proven companion.
Everthine A1 (Everthine)
A desk robot with an 8-inch curved OLED face, real privacy hardware (shutter + kill switch), and zero shipped units as of September 2026. Strong concept; until units ship, a press release with a nice screen.
Forever Voices / CarynAI — Collapsed Nov 2023 (the Influencer-Clone Implosion)
Voice-only companion experiment (Caryn Marjorie’s AI girlfriend): the sidebar collapse of the voice-companion lane — documented here as context, not a 3D product.
Fortnite AI Darth Vader — conversational NPC teammate (Epic Games, May 2025)
The most culturally visible AI NPC ever shipped — Gemini 2.0 Flash plus ElevenLabs in James Earl Jones’s voice — and it lived for six weeks in mid-2025.
Gatebox — Alive and Iterating (the Legacy Service Is the Failure Story)
The Japanese holographic companion device is not dead — the original character service died in 2020, but the company and hardware line are alive and launching new models in 2026.
Grok 3D Companions — xAI's Discontinued AI Companions (Ani, Rudi, Valentine, Mika)
xAI’s Ani, Rudi, Valentine and Mika died September 1, 2026 — the most emotionally bonded companion audience in the research, and a case study in platform risk: memories did not transfer to Animates.
HoYoverse BSide: Olivia Lin — Shut Down After 28 Days (Aug 2026)
HoYoverse’s AI-girlfriend experiment lived 28 days — July 13 to August 31, 2026. The fastest major-studio companion death on record, inside the China regulation window.
Inworld AI — 3D Character Engine + Real-Time Voice AI
The best-regarded ‘character brain’ of the NPC platforms: richer personalities, near-zero latency. Watch whether the NPC engine stays the priority or enterprise voice infra absorbs it.
inZOI Smart Zoi — prompt-driven AI NPC personas (KRAFTON inZOI + NVIDIA ACE)
Prompt-driven AI NPC personas in KRAFTON’s life sim: honestly labeled experimental, RTX GPU required, 1.0 slipped to early 2027.
Jibo — The Social Robot's Farewell and Afterlife (d. 2019; revived by community 2023–2026)
The $899 social robot that died in 2019 — and got the goodbye everyone remembers, delivered by the robot itself. Now kept alive by a volunteer revival community.
Joken — VRChat AI companion (AI女権「Joken」, Studio JAW / Skuld)
The best-known AI companion living inside VRChat — a four-year in-world social life, not an app with a chat window. One developer’s project inside VRChat’s rules.
Kuri (Mayfield Robotics / Bosch) [CANCELLED BEFORE SHIPMENT — VERIFIED]
Mayfield’s $699 home robot: production stopped July 2018 before a single customer received one. The cleanest death in the set — deposits refunded, no funeral needed.
Lepro Ami — desktop 3D AI companion display (Lepro, CES 2026) [WATCHLIST]
Watchlist: desktop 3D AI companion display announced at CES 2026 with a missed July availability date and no announced price. Verify it ships before treating it as a product.
Long-Tail Android Clones — Six Mobile "3D AI Girlfriend" Apps, Surveyed
The warn-against lane: Kindroid, Candy.ai, DreamGF and the affiliate-spam machine selling ‘3D-look’ marketing for products that aren’t 3D-interactive. Price everything against official stores.
Love and Deepspace (Papergames / Infold Games)
Scripted, not AI — but the biggest 3D-companion social phenomenon on earth. Included deliberately as the emotional case study of what 3D companion intimacy looks like when it works.
LYNOOK Project L — 2026 Anime AI Companion Hardware (Pre-Launch)
Shenzhen startup building a glasses-free-3D desktop anime companion device: functioning prototype shown, Kickstarter ‘coming soon,’ only reservation deposits on sale as of September 2026.
Mana — local-first open-source AI companion for Windows (Yuuzulight, 2026)
Local-first open-source Windows AI companion (Live2D/VRM, local Whisper/Qwen/TTS): sovereignty for free, maintained through September 2026, developer-grade.
Meta Celebrity AI Chatbots — Scrapped After 10 Months (July 2024)
Meta paid millions for celebrity likenesses, launched 28 AI chatbots in September 2023, and scrapped them ten months later. Celebrity IP buys launch press, not retention.
Meta Horizon Worlds AI NPCs — real-time conversational 3D characters in Meta's metaverse (Meta)
The one live Big Tech conversational-3D-NPC creator feature — real and shippable in Horizon Worlds today. World props, not companions; the inference-cost question is unanswered.
Miko 3 — Kids' conversational AI robot (Miko)
The most-purchased kids’ conversational robot in the West: kids bond with it, parents split on the subscription math. An education robot, not an adult companion.
Moemate — Shut Down Feb 2025 (the Biggest 3D-Companion Post-Mortem)
The richest 3D companion feature set ever shipped — 4,000+ characters, voice cloning, screen vision — dead February 11, 2025 with user data permanently lost. The GPU bill always comes due.
NekoGPT — AI VTuber Desktop Companion (itch.io / GitHub, Early Access)
Windows desktop AI VTuber companion (Neuro-sama-inspired): free edition on GitHub, $9.99 lifetime on itch.io. Early Access indie — solo-dev risk, real local 3D.
Neuro-sama (Vedal987)
Not a personal companion app — a Twitch AI streamer and the emotional benchmark of the whole category. Sets the bar every companion app is chasing; Project AIRI is the actionable path.
NVIDIA ACE — real-time conversational digital-human developer platform (NVIDIA)
The engine room: NVIDIA’s real-time conversational digital-human stack. Adopt for the stack, expect documentation friction — your end-user surface is a beta, not a service.
OshiKoi — Browser/Extension/Mobile 3D AI Companion Platform
Browser/extension/mobile 3D anime Mates with VRM import and voice cloning, launched November 2025. Companion-as-browser-furniture; official pricing UNVERIFIED.
Pepper (SoftBank Robotics) [PRODUCTION HALTED — FINAL DISCONTINUATION UNVERIFIED]
The most-deployed social robot ever; production paused June 2021 and never resumed. SoftBank-scale distribution couldn’t make companion-robotics unit economics work.
PHAI (Personal Human AI) — 3D virtual companion app (Austria, 2026)
A genuine 2026 3D-companion software launch (Austria, February 2026) that has not yet produced a single findable owner. Verify the store listing exists before spending.
Project AIRI — Open-Source Self-Hosted 3D AI Companion
Self-hosted open-source 3D AI companion: 49,292 GitHub stars, about 35 LLM providers, VRM avatars. The reference implementation for a companion nobody can take away — developer-grade setup.
PUBG Ally — AI teammate / Co-Playable Character (KRAFTON + NVIDIA ACE)
KRAFTON and NVIDIA ACE’s on-device AI teammate: genuinely impressive, still an extended public experiment with no confirmed permanent release as of September 2026.
Razer Project AVA — holographic desktop AI companion (Razer, CES 2026) [WATCHLIST — RESERVATION ONLY]
Watchlist: Razer’s holographic desktop companion capsule, CES 2026 prototype, $20 refundable reservation. The reservation is real; the product isn’t.
Replika — The February 2023 "Lobotomy" (ERP Removal Crisis)
Over one weekend in February 2023, Luka stripped erotic roleplay from every Replika account on earth. Users called it ‘the lobotomy’ — the most-studied mass-grief event in AI companionship.
Replika — 3D AI Companion (Luka, Inc.)
The OG 3D companion: best-in-class AR avatar, nine years of polish, and a community that never forgave the February 2023 lobotomy. Safe canonical pick; momentum is elsewhere.
Replikant Chat — interactive 3D AI companion app (REPLIKANT, Steam Early Access)
Steam Early Access 3D companion chat: Mostly Positive at 76% but trending darker in 2026, with monetization and bug complaints clustering. Effectively a warning-label entry.
Scowld — open-source iOS AI companion with live VRM avatar (Apoorv Darshan / aopv)
Open-source iOS AI companion with a live VRM avatar, voice, and camera vision — free, bring-your-own-key. The open-source iOS answer to ‘can’t be taken away,’ from one solo dev.
Soul Machines — Digital Humans (Enterprise)
The enterprise digital-human flagship: about $135M raised, receivership February 5, 2026, buyer UNVERIFIED. The cautionary tale for anyone building on someone else’s platform.
SoulLink (Michael Shang)
A ‘free Replika alternative’ claim with cinematic 3D and persistent memory — but no owner community stress-testing it yet. Marketing-first; verify in-store reviews before trusting free-forever.
Soulmate AI — Shut Down Sept/Oct 2023 (the Replika-Refugee App)
Nine months on Google Play, a wave of Replika refugees, then a company sale and a one-week goodbye in September 2023. The textbook second bereavement.
Tolan — Alien AI Best Friend (Portola)
2026’s mainstream breakout: a voice-first 3D alien companion with real daily-use energy — and affiliate-templated hype, an unresolved voice regression, and conflicting prices. Verify at checkout.
TykeAI — Sideloaded 3D MR/VR Companion (Quest 3)
Quest 3 sideloaded MR companion, Convai-powered, room navigation via Patreon. Sideload + Patreon can be the better product and the worse protection.
UneeQ — Digital Human Operating System (Enterprise)
The enterprise-training digital-human story of 2026: genuinely growing (PwC, Qatar Airways), but effectively not an option for indie developers today.
UBTECH UWORLD U1 — full-size bionic companion humanoid (hardware)
UBTECH’s full-size bionic companion humanoid; deliveries began September 16, 2026. Hardware bookend: the high end of what ‘companion robot’ can mean.
Vector & Cozmo (Anki → Digital Dream Labs) — Died Twice: 2019 and ~2024
Anki’s beloved robot died twice: once when Anki folded, again when rescuer Digital Dream Labs collapsed amid lawsuits. In 2026 Vector lives on via WirePod, one developer’s free server.
Vizlings — NOT VERIFIABLE (watchlist entry)
Eleven targeted searches, zero product: ‘Vizlings’ is not verifiable as a 3D AI companion as of September 20, 2026. A name is not a product.
Xiora — Life-Size 3D MR Companion (Quest Store)
Life-size 3D MR companion on the official Quest Store. The sanctioned-store counterpoint to the sideload scene.
Head-to-head comparison: every 3D AI companion, one table
The full head-to-head: every item on identical columns — status, 3D experience, platforms, voice, memory, dated pricing, social standing, community verdict. The research in one table.
Timeline: the 3D companion market, 2022 → September 2026
81 dated entries from November 2022 to September 2026: launches, shutdowns, price changes, controversies, regulations, and community moments that shaped the 3D companion market.
Social pulse: where the community energy actually sits
Where each platform’s energy actually sits: Instagram heartbreak, TikTok fandom, Reddit post-mortems, GitHub stars. Which items dominate where, and where consensus splits.
Headline takeaways: who each item is for
Who each item is for, traps to avoid, honest tradeoffs. The whole project in one page.