Musk Introduces New AI Tool, Grok, to Compete with ChatGPT

Elon Musk’s new AI chatbot Grok outperformed ChatGPT-3.5 in all specific tests, but not ChatGPT-4.

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has launched Grok, a new AI tool that has outdone OpenAI’s first iteration of ChatGPT in a number of academic tests, according to a post on the startup’s website.

Empowering research and innovation

According to the team behind the project, Grok was motivated by the goal to create AI tools that can help people by empowering research and innovation. Grok’s main and unique advantage lies in its real-time knowledge of the world, obtained through X, formerly Twitter.

The post states that the tool will respond to “spicy questions” that most other AI chatbots reject. True to the personality of Musk, its creator, Grok responds with a bit of wit and expresses its rebellious nature. The post warns people not to use Grok if they hate humor, adding:

Grok is still a very early beta product – the best we could do with two months of training – so expect it to improve rapidly with each passing week with your help.

Select users can access Grok on X Premium Plus for $16 per month. It’s only available to a limited number of US users for now. There is a waitlist to sign up and a link to the list from the post.

Grok beat ChatGPT-3.5 in all academic tests

Grok-1, the engine powering the tool, was assessed in coding and math using several academic tests and outdid ChatGPT-3.5 on all of them, but not GPT-4. A table within the post lists comparisons between the specific performance metrics of each tool.

Grok’s creators state that only models trained on a much higher volume of data can surpass it. According to them, this shows how quickly they are making progress and how efficient the model already is and can become.

With time, the team behind the project plans to implement more safety measures to prevent malicious use of the new tool. For the time being, Grok appears to be much safer than ChatGPT.