Elon Musk’s new AI company launches Grok the chatbot

It's Monday, November 06, 2023.

Elon Musk’s new AI company, xAI, will release its chatbot to X subscribers who pay $16 per month once it exits beta. A select group of X users started testing Grok, a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, this weekend.

Musk laid out his heady ambitions for xAI earlier this year, saying in July that its intended purpose is, quite literally, “to understand the true nature of the universe.” Having said that, Musk says Grok will wield a sense of humor, like this… banter sewn into a guide to making cocaine, which must be funny to someone.

Grok’s notable feature is its real-time access to information published on X, which Musk claims will be “a massive advantage over other models.” Rival chatbots are limited to the information fed to their model. If Grok constantly pulls new information from X, it could have an edge. It could also be more liable to the horrible biases of AI models, not to mention parsing the mass of misinformation swirling around the rebranded social network.

— Mat Smith

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