Musk launches 'scary smart' AI chatbot | Northwest & National News ...
Elon Musk's AI company is releasing a new version of its chatbot, Grok. Musk's artificial intelligence company unveiled on Monday the latest version of its chatbot, Grok 3, which the billionaire hopes will find traction in a highly competitive sector contested by the likes of ChatGPT and China's DeepSeek.
New Features of Grok 3
The launch comes as the world's richest man is deploying the enormous powers granted him by US President Donald Trump to restructure and dismantle federal agencies. Musk has promoted Grok 3 as "scary smart," with 10 times the computational resources of its predecessor that was released in August last year. The flagship product of his xAI company was trained on synthetic data and employs self-correction mechanisms that avoid errors -- known as "hallucinations" -- that plague some AI chatbots and lead them to process false or misleading data as fact.
Grok 3 Capabilities
"Grok is to understand the universe," Musk said at the start of the Grok 3 launch presentation. "We're driven by curiosity about the nature of the universe -- that's also what causes us to be a maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct." Grok 3 has very powerful reasoning capabilities, and in tests conducted, it has outperformed other AI chatbots in the market.
Competition in the AI Industry
The upgraded chatbot enters a crowded field with countries racing to introduce more sophisticated and cost-effective AI products. Grok 3 is going up against OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT, as well as challenges from other companies like China's DeepSeek.
Musk's Role in the AI Industry
Musk has become a key figure in the administration, as one of Trump's closest advisers and the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has begun a radical overhaul of the US government bureaucracy. Critics warn that Musk's proximity to the president poses a major conflict of interest as he guides Trump on laws and regulations around artificial intelligence -- just one sector in which he has a substantial commercial stake.
According to Bloomberg, xAI has been canvassing potential investors for a roughly $10 billion funding round that would value the company at about $75 billion. Musk, who also acts as the boss of SpaceX and Tesla, launched the xAI company in July 2023, shortly after he signed an open letter calling for a pause in the development of powerful AI models.
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