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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Recreation of Neuro-sama for a year, alternative of Grok Companion

This is the project we've worked for over a year, gaining already over 1300 stars, 200 Discord members, the container of cyber livings, Project AIRI, where you can own your own customized AI companion on mobile devices, desktops, and be able to play Minecraft, Factorio, connects Discord, Telegram, while be able to do normal chat, realtime voice chat, and many other things. We were working hard for the past month to deliver better Desktop version of our Project AIRI, we decided previously to hold our initial show on HN until next release with many more features. However, yesterday, xAI…

Project AIRI is a customizable AI companion platform for mobile and desktop devices. It enables users to chat, engage in real-time voice conversations, and play games like Minecraft and Factorio while connecting to… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1
    AIRI▲87

    Cyber livings in any devices, Grok Companion alternative

    2025 · airi.moeru.ai · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Your ambient AI companion for Windows.

    Aug 2026 · projectsky-ten.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Play AI▲447

    The voice interface of AI

    2024 · its alternatives →

  4. 4IB

    Hi HN, I built this out of frustration of the evergrowing list of AI models and features to try and to fit my workflow. The visual approach clicks for me so i went with it, it provides more freedom and control of the outcome, because predictable results and increased productivity is what I’m after when using conversational AI. The app is packed with features, my most used are prompt library, voice input and text search, narration is useful too. The app is local-first and works right in the browser, no sign up needed and it's absolutely free to try. BYOAK – bring your own API Keys. Let me…

    2024 · grafychat.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Grok Bot▲555

    AI teammates that you can give real work to

    Aug 2026 · x.ai · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hi HN, A few of our team members at Airbyte (and Joe, who killed it!) recently played with building our own internal support chat bot, using Airbyte, Langchain, Pinecone and OpenAI, that would answer any questions we ask when developing a new connector on Airbyte. As we prototyped it, we realized that it could be applied for many other use cases and sources of data, so... we created a tutorial that other community members can leverage [http://airbyte.com/tutorials/chat-with-your-data-using-opena...] and the Github repo to run it…

    2023 · airbyte.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Pushing the boundaries of conversational AI

    2025 · rapport.cloud · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Hi HN! Last year the project I launched here got a lot of good feedback on creating speech to speech AI on the ESP32. Recently I revamped the whole stack, iterated on that feedback and made our project fully open-source—all of the client, hardware, firmware code. This Github repo turns an ESP32-S3 into a realtime AI speech companion using the OpenAI Realtime API, Arduino WebSockets, Deno Edge Functions, and a full-stack web interface. You can talk to your own custom AI character, and it responds instantly. I couldn't find a resource that helped set up a reliable, secure websocket (WSS) AI…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Hi HN community! We want to share AI-town, a deployable starter kit for building and customizing your own version of AI simulation - a virtual town where AI characters live, chat and socialize. Inspired by great work from the Stanford Generative Agent paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442). A few features: - Includes a convex.dev backed server-side game engine that handles global state - Multiplayer ready. Deployment ready - 100% Typescript - Easily customizable. You can fork it, change character memories, add new sprites/tiles and you have a custom AI simulation…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    OpenBotfree▲362

    Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer

    25d ago · openbot.run · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    Beni AI▲78

    Hi HN, I built Beni (https://thebeni.ai ), a web app for real-time video calls with an AI companion. The idea started as a pretty simple question: text chatbots are everywhere, but they rarely feel present. I wanted something closer to a call, where the character actually reacts in real time (voice, timing, expressions), not just “type, wait, reply”. Beni is basically: A Live2D avatar that animates during the call (expressions + motion driven by the conversation) Real-time voice conversation (streaming response, not “wait 10 seconds then speak”) Long-term memory so the character…

    Feb 2026 · thebeni.ai · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Create and chat with AI in Instagram, Messenger & WhatsApp

    2025 · ai.meta.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    1. In the US, about 1/5 children are hospitalized each year that don’t have a caregiver. Caregiver such as play therapists and parents’ stress can also affect children's emotions. 2. Not everyone is good at making friends and not everyone has a BFF to talk to. Imagine you're having a hard time in life or at work, and you can't tell your parents or friends. So, we built an open-source project Starmoon and are using affordable hardware components to bring AI characters to real-word objects like toys and plushies to help people emotional growth. We believe this is a complement tool and it…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    Ai LiLi▲67

    Turn your NFTs and Metaverse avatars into AI companions

    2023 · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    The Frontend Stack for Agents & Generative UI. React, Angular, Mobile, Slack, and more. Makers of the AG-UI Protocol - CopilotKit/CopilotKit

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Welcome to Project S.A.T.U.R.D.A.Y. This is a project that allows anyone to easily build their own self-hosted J.A.R.V.I.S-like voice assistant. In my mind vocal computing is the future of human-computer interaction and by open sourcing this code I hope to expedite us on that path. I have had a blast working on this so far and I'm excited to continue to build with it. It uses whisper.cpp [1], Coqui TTS [2] and OpenAI [3] to do speech-to-text, text-to-text and text-to-speech inference all 100% locally (except for text-to-text). In the future I plan to swap out OpenAI for llama.cpp [4]. It is…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Create and monetize your AI anime companions in minutes

    2024 · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Voxos is an open-source desktop voice assistant that aims to put Clippy to shame while supporting new desktop workflows powered by LLMs. Tired of copy and pasting ChatGPT responses between your web browser and IDE? Does your copilot not quite do what you need it to do? I invite you to give Voxos a try and maybe even become a contributor!

    2024 · gitlab.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Modular Interface for visually interactive AI responses

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Voiced AI characters - make AI art and adventure together

    2023 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Enjoy private or group chat with various AI based on ChatGPT

    2023 · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    EvoTalk▲29

    Video Chat with AI Characters

    2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    We built an open-source project Starmoon and are using affordable hardware components to bring AI characters to real-word objects like toys and plushies (or even your talking fridge). With voice to voice models sounding more and more human every day, a cool use-case would be to take the conversation away from screens and personify real-world objects. For our project we use an ESP32-S3 microcontroller with a mic and a mono-speaker to keep the cost at $10. We are fully open-sourcing our frontend, backend and firmware so you too can get started and create and customize your companion device.…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24IB

    Hello everyone! I'm excited to announce the launch of Astrocyte, a web app that allows you to create and interact with 3D AI characters. Whether it's video game heroes, anime characters, political figures, or even that obscure NPC from your favorite RPG, you can bring them to life and have a chat with them on Astrocyte! Many users have already begun crafting their own characters on Astrocyte, and the conversations have been incredibly entertaining. I would be thrilled if you could give it a try and share your honest feedback. Thank you!

    2023 · heyastrocyte.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →