Nov 6, 2023 - Technology

Meet Grok: Elon Musk's AI offering

Photo illustration of downcast Elon Musk wearing a party hat and blowing a party horn. — Photo illustration: Aïda Amer. Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk Saturday introduced a new chatbot called "Grok" out of his xAI startup, claiming that AI should be "useful to people of all backgrounds and political views."

Driving the news: xAI spent four months training Grok, which it categorizes as a "frontier large language model" — which would make it subject to new AI testing requirements both from the White House and those agreed upon at last week's AI safety summit in London.

X claims Grok is "a very early beta product" with a sense of humor and "a rebellious streak" — but since hardly anyone has access to the service currently, it's hard to test the claim.

Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems," the company says.

Between the lines: The xAI team says the "fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform."

Context: The team that built Grok includes alumni of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft.

Ina's thought bubble: The characterization of Grok could add a political dimension to the AI market, with customers evaluating not just how accurate AI is, but also how much they like the politics of the answer.

Add Axios on Google

Meet Grok: Elon Musk's AI offering

What to read next