xAI's Grok: X Premium+ subscribers to get access to Musk's new AI chatbot

Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, seems to be developing its variant of ChatGPT, as suggested by his recent tweets. Musk has teased xAI's AI system, Grok, which is designed to answer questions conversationally. Grok may be drawing from a knowledge base similar to the one used to train ChatGPT and other text-generating systems, such as Meta's Llama 2, as indicated by Musk's tweets. 

It has the ability to access real-time information related to "X" and can browse the internet, just like ChatGPT, to retrieve the latest information on specific topics. It appears that Grok might have a more humorous approach to such queries, although it's unclear whether the responses are pre-determined or if the system is genuinely designed to have a touch of humour.

xAI’s Grok system is designed to have a little humor in its responses pic.twitter.com/WqXxlwI6ef

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023

Musk initially announced that xAI would release its first AI system, presumably Grok, to a select group on November 4. However, in a subsequent tweet, he stated that all subscribers to X's Premium Plus plan would gain access to Grok once it exits the early beta phase. Additionally, xAI is offering a limited number of users in the U.S. access to Grok through a waitlist. Details about Grok and xAI's broader research projects are still limited, although xAI published a blog post that provides insight into Grok, including its training methods and infrastructure.

As soon as it’s out of early beta, xAI’s Grok system will be available to all X Premium+ subscribers

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023

According to the blog post, Grok-1, the large language model powering Grok, was developed over several months using a cluster of tens of thousands of GPUs, possibly provided by Oracle. The training data came from both the web (up to Q3 2023) and feedback from human assistants referred to as "AI tutors" by xAI. Grok-1 demonstrates impressive performance on standard language model benchmark tests, surpassing other models in its computational class. It also exhibits a degree of humour and a willingness to address unconventional or "spicy" questions, although the exact definition of "spicy" remains uncertain.

In a tweet, Musk stated that xAI's new model is, in some important respects, the best currently available. xAI was launched in July with the ambitious goal of developing AI capable of comprehending the true nature of the universe. The company, led by Musk and staffed by experts from various prominent organizations, collaborates with X and other companies in Musk's purview, including Tesla.