Elon Musk’s xAI unveils a new chatbot called “Grok” to rival ChatGPT

By
Dip Khatiwada
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Elon Musk xAI Grok
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After co-founding OpenAI (and cutting ties with it), Elon Musk launched his own AI company that goes by the name of “xAI”. And recently, xAI announced one of its first projects: an LLM called “Grok”.  In this article, I will explain more about the alleged “ better than chatGPT “ chatbot. Let’s dive in.

xAI’s Grok: Overview

A bit of background

After months of anticipation, the first product from Elon Musk’s xAI might be closer than we expected. However, right after leaving the board of OpenAI, Musk had become increasingly critical of AI and its emergence. He even went on to claim that AI possessed the biggest existential threat known to humanity. Despite, all of that, Musk went on the record to speak about how the prototype of Grok had already surpassed ChatGPT. 

Furthermore, the success of this new company might not be as promising as his previous ventures. The primary reason for this is that Elon Musk has been losing his charm since he acquired X. Musk has garnered more criticism than ever before due to his controversial political remarks, and the spread of misinformation at times. Additionally, his decision to lay off thousands of people from their jobs doesn’t help either. 

Leaving his outside interests aside, let’s understand what this ‘Grok’ is really about. 

Grok Chatbot

xAI's Grok

Elon Musk’s xAI has introduced Grok, a new witty chatbot with a very edgy sense of humor. Grok self-describes as having a ‘rebellious streak’ and takes inspiration from the popular comedy science fiction franchise ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’. The images that surfaced online make it well evident as well. 

“By the way, ‘Grok’ lacks a precise definition, but the Oxford dictionary defines it as ‘to intuitively understand or to empathize’. So, I guess the name does make sense with its definition as well. In addition, Grok will have real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform. It will also answer certain types of questions that are usually rejected by most chatbots.

What influenced Elon Musk?

Musk had previously criticized ChatGPT for being too rigid and stuck within the boundaries of modern political correctness. His fundamental concerns were that the popular chatbot held an overtly tamed moral position and that this so-called intelligent agent lacked features resembling sentience. This could be one of those reasons, which influenced Mr. Musk. 

Demo and Capabilities


The chatbot will improve with user feedback as it has direct access to user posts in the X platform. The Beta model is currently available to a select few groups. And the results show a remarkable prowess. The bot has the unusual ability to throw some quick banters and responses are full of sarcasm and wits as well.

What model does Grok use?

Grok-1, like other large language models, operates on a deep neural network architecture known as a transformer. Furthermore, it is trained on an extensive dataset of text from the internet. And it learns to predict and generate human-like text by fine-tuning its vast number of parameters. What sets Grok-1 apart is its contextual understanding, enabling it to comprehend the context in which words are used in sentences. With its large parameter size, Grok-1 can capture intricate patterns in a wide range of languages. 

Public view and Ethical concerns

While Grok’s wit and Twitter insights are impressive, they raise some important ethical concerns. Critiques argue access to personal social media posts is disrespecting one’s privacy.  In addition, some added that the use of humor by AI chatbots might even perpetuate gross stereotypes.

Other projects of xAI

While in July, Musk announced that, the main goal of xAI would be to understand the “true nature of the universe” through AI. It’s a problem that has perplexed philosophers and scientists for centuries. However, for now, it seems a little bit far-fetched to jump right into a metaphysical domain. As the nature of reality and consciousness are untestable stuff. And they are simply not in the scope of our understanding with the current knowledge of the established field of sciences. 

 Elon Musk’s xAi Grok: Availability 


As mentioned above, only a select few groups in the United States have been made access to the beta version. Likewise, Once Grok AI exits beta, it will be available for all X Premium+ users. Hence, subscribing will be the only option to access Grok.  

Meanwhile, you also watch our review of Motorola G84