Musk’s xAI offers free access to Grok-2 chatbot for all X users
Nickie Louise
Posted On December 16, 2024
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI announced on Saturday that the latest version of its Grok-2 chatbot is now available at no cost to all users of the social media platform X.
“Over the past few weeks we have been quietly testing a new version of the Grok-2 model, which is three times faster and offers improved accuracy, instruction-following, and multilingual capabilities,” Musk’s xAI wrote in a recent company blog post.
“Today we are excited to announce that we are beginning to roll out this new version of Grok-2 to all users on X for free. As always, Premium and Premium+ users get higher usage limits and will be the first to access any new capabilities in the future,” the blog post added.
The company also took to social media to announce the rollout. “Grok is now free for everyone. Our AI assistant is faster, sharper, and includes all new-image generation. Available for free on today,” xAI said on X.
Grok is now free for everyone
Our AI assistant is faster, sharper, and includes all new-image generation. Available for free on today.
Try Grok now: https://t.co/Tj0afLp5u7
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
— xAI (@xai) December 14, 2024
The company shared that it had been testing the updated Grok-2 model in recent weeks, keeping the development process under wraps until this wider rollout.
Grok utilizes the X platform to stay updated on real-time events and trends worldwide. To improve this functionality, xAI recently introduced two key features: web search and citations. These additions enable Grok to source information not only from posts on X but also from web pages across the internet, delivering timely and precise answers to user queries. The inclusion of citations provides users with direct access to sources, allowing them to explore details further or verify the accuracy of the information provided.
Launched last year, xAI aims to be a “maximum truth-seeking AI.” The rollout of Grok for Premium+ subscribers showed Musk’s ambition to shake up the AI field, as he discussed with Lex Fridman, expressing disappointment in OpenAI’s shift away from its nonprofit, open-source origins.
Musk first introduced Grok on November 6, 2023, describing it as having a “rebellious streak” and a sense of humor and sarcasm, distinguishing it from competitors like ChatGPT and Google Bard. The company said the first version of the chatbot was not trained on X data, and in March, it announced an update, though it remains unclear which data was used for training.
