The race on who can provide the better AI service has been going on for a while now, and Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, is joining in. Grok, the new chatbot developed by the billionaire’s xAI startup, has made its debut on social media as of today and is taking the fight to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Grok began its rollout late this afternoon to X Premium Plus subscribers. For the uninitiated, this subscription is an additional third tier that eliminates ads altogether and is currently at RM70 per month, as well as early access to the chatbot. Even though the rollout is expected to wrap up in the next week, longtime subscribers will be granted priority access, therefore allowing them to try out the new system earlier than others.
Much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard or Gemini, Grok will answer questions with a conversational tone, drawing on a knowledge base similar to that used to train the aforementioned AI models. Premium users will notice it sitting next to the X side menu on the web, iOS, and Android, and it can also be added to the bottom menu in the platform’s mobile apps for quicker access.
The AI model is currently known as Grok-1, and what distinguishes it from the competition is its ability to incorporate real-time data from posts on X into its responses. Because of this unique feature, Grok has a significant advantage over its competitors; while others would provide a vague, outdated answer, Grok can piece together responses from very recent headlines, allowing it to generate an answer that is “truthful” and relative. The addition of quotation marks over the word truthful is very important, as it is not clear what sources the AI is choosing or what the margin for error is.
Grok just passed my sanity check pic.twitter.com/HYN3KTkRyX
— Jim Fan (@DrJimFan) December 7, 2023
Some users suggest that the new AI “sounds more intelligent” than other chatbots thanks to its edgier personality and sense of humour. Keep in mind that Grok is currently text-only, and is unable to understand the content of images or videos – for now, at least. On that note, xAI previously stated that it intends to improve the underlying model to handle video, audio, and other modalities.
(Source: Tech Crunch, Grok)
