What is Grok AI? Elon Musk makes chatbot available to more X users
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok AI is going to be available to more people this week via the social network X (formerly Twitter). Musk announced - via X, naturally - that Grok will be available to Premium subscribers this week, having previously only been available to higher-end Premium+ subscribers. It follows an announcement earlier this month that the chatbot would be ‘open source’. Users who pay £8 a month for Premium accounts on X will be able to interact with the chatbot via Musk’s social network.
Grok AI Features
Grok is a chatbot similar to ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but accessible via X. Once known as TruthGPT, Musk initially billed it as a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe". Musk has promised that Grok will be ‘anti-woke’ and offers a ‘Fun Mode’ as well as an ‘Unhinged Fun Mode’. The chatbot is accessible via X, and only to subscribers.
Musk's Initatives
Musk’s move this week could be an attempt to drum up more subscriptions, TechCrunch suggests, with data from Sensor Tower suggesting usage is down 23% since Musk acquired the social media giant. Grok’s Unhinged Fun Mode was shown mocking Elon Musk for the unusual name of his child last week - 'X Æ A-12 Musk'. But in previous tests, the software was shown to be progressive in its views on trans people and other culture war issues. Grok said (among other things): "Diversity and inclusion are essential for creating a fair and equitable society where everyone is treated with respect and has the opportunity to thrive."
OpenAI Lawsuit
Musk filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but left three years later. Musk alleged that OpenAI had "breached the founding agreement" by becoming a for-profit company. In response, OpenAI publicised emails that allegedly showed the Tesla CEO supported a plan to create a for-profit entity and wanted a merger with the EV maker to make the combined company a "cash cow". Musk said at Britain's AI Safety Summit last year that he wanted to establish a "third-party referee" that could oversee firms developing AI and sound the alarm if they have concerns. In a podcast episode with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, Musk suggested in November that he favoured the concept of open-source AI.
Sources: ChatGPT is easy to fool – and might be less useful than we thought (Yahoo News UK), AI researcher calls for 'immediate worldwide ban' (Business Insider), AI researcher says '10-20%' chance AI will take over (Fortune)
