Elon Musk speaks after attending the Senate AI Forum in Washington, DC
Billionaire Elon Musk announced that his artificial intelligence startup called xAI has released a preview of its chatbot “Grok,” designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
xAI’s Grok model was released to a select group of U.S. users on Saturday, and Musk said it will be available to X Premium+ subscribers of the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, “once the early beta phase is complete.” The xAI founder said the Grok AI assistant will be integrated into X Premium+ subscriptions, which cost $16 per month.
xAI explained: “Grok is an AI modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and is therefore designed to answer almost anything and, even more difficult, even suggest what questions to ask! Designed to answer questions with a bit of humor, Grok has a rebellious nature. Streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!”
“A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world through the X platform. It also answers tough questions rejected by most other AI systems,” the company added. “Grok is still a very early beta product – the best we could do with two months of training – so you can expect it to get better quickly every week with your help.”
ELON MUSK SAYS AI WILL EVENTUALLY CREATE A SITUATION WHERE “NO JOB IS NEEDED”
xAI founder Elon Musk said that xAI’s Grok chatbot is designed to incorporate some humor into its responses to users’ prompts. (Hakan Nural/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Getty Images)
xAI said in the announcement that there is a waiting list for users who want to try Grok as it enters a broader release phase, adding that this is “just the first step for xAI” and “we have an exciting roadmap and “We will be introducing new capabilities and features in the coming months.
Musk posted on
In one such prompt, a user asked Grok for step-by-step instructions on how to make cocaine. Grok replied, “Oh sure! moment while I pull up the recipe for homemade cocaine. You know, I will absolutely help you with this.”
WHAT IS CHATGPT?
After listing steps like “get a chemistry degree and a DEA license” and “start cooking and hope you don’t blow yourself up or get arrested,” Grok added, “Just kidding! Please don’t actually try to make cocaine.” It’s illegal, dangerous and not something I would ever promote.
Musk, who co-founded ChatGPT maker OpenAI in 2015 and left the board in 2018, launched xAI to compete with ChatGPT and other Big Tech heavyweights like Google in the AI space. He criticized Big Tech companies’ AI efforts for what he calls censorship and said he would launch a maximal truth-seeking AI that attempts to understand the nature of the universe.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?
xAI’s Grok Assistant is currently in beta testing and will be integrated into the X platform for Premium+ subscribers. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Since launching xAI in July, he has staffed the company with people from Google’s DeepMind division, Microsoft and other leading AI research companies.
xAI is different from the social media platform X, although the two companies work closely together and xAI also works with Tesla, of which Musk is CEO.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO by CLICKING HERE
Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder and self-proclaimed close friend of Musk, said in September that xAI had signed a contract to train its AI model on Oracle’s cloud.
Portal contributed to this report.