xAI, the company Elon Musk founded to take on OpenAI and other startups racing in the elusive AI space, is set to launch its first offering ‘Grok’ this week. The billionaire, known for companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, has announced that the AI chatbot will be integrated into the X platform (formerly Twitter) as part of an early access program.
The company has already opened signups for the program, but the caveat is that it will be only available to those who have taken the most expensive paid plan of the social networking platform. Those on other plans or using X for free will not get access just yet.
The move comes mere weeks after xAI’s announcement of Grok and is expected to challenge the dominance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been the go-to general-purpose AI assistant for almost a year now.
While many details remain under wraps, the X posts shared by Musk and his team at xAI indicate that Grok will be a ChatGPT competitor, which will be able to engage in back-and-forth conversations when prompted. It is expected to handle all sorts of queries from users, right from mathematical problems to code challenges.
However, unlike other players in the AI race, Grok will differentiate with exclusive access to X and its realtime, user-generated posts and information. The model behind the assistant has been trained on billions of posts (formerly called tweets) on X and will have access to the most recent data posted on X, enabling it to provide up-to-date information when asked about a current issue.
Toby Pohlen, one of the founding members of xAI who came from Google Deepmind, notes that the bot currently takes “a few seconds” to analyze information collected from multiple posts and return an answer in the form of a summary.
He says that the company is working to improve the system and the feature should get faster, although it remains unclear how they plan to keep misinformation – which is also pretty common on X – from falling through the cracks.
Beyond responses based on real-time data, Grok AI will also differentiate with add-on features like a dedicated “fun” mode, multi-tasking, shareable chats and feedback for conversations. The fun mode will be the most interesting of all as it is expected to give Grok a distinct personality where it will be able to hold more engaging conversations with a touch of sarcasm and humor.
xAI’s Grok system is designed to have a little humor in its responses pic.twitter.com/WqXxlwI6ef
Meanwhile, with the other three capabilities, users will be able to have multiple conversations with Grok on the same window, share those conversations outside of the platform through a link and provide detailed feedback to xAI on the quality of individual conversations, allowing the company to improve the bot over time.
For every feedback with an optimal response, the users will get what xAI calls a “feedback score.”
xAI has set up a dedicated website for Grok, which directs users to sign up for the early access program.
Here’s the deal: anyone can log in with their X account to sign up for this program, but the initial access will only be provided to those who have a verified profile with an X Premium Plus subscription (formerly Twitter Blue) that costs $16 USD/month.
If a user with this subscription enrolls, they should get access to the chatbot sometime this week. Musk notes that they are opening access in blocks, prioritized by when a user signed up for the subscription.
The billionaire also plans to bring a dedicated Grok tab on X to make it easier for early users to chat with the AI assistant. The move is expected to boost user engagement on the platform, although it remains unclear when the company will go beyond verified users. Musk bought X for $44 billion in 2022.
Regardless of timelines, one thing’s pretty clear: xAI is moving very quickly to take Grok mainstream. They started working on the assistant just about three months ago and are now in the process of making it available – while focusing on improving the system and its responses at the same time. If anything, we can expect the chatbot to get better and faster over the next few months, ultimately leading to widespread availability.
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xAI, the company Elon Musk founded to take on OpenAI and other startups racing in the elusive AI space, is set to launch its first offering ‘Grok’ this week. The billionaire, known for companies like Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, has announced that the AI chatbot will be integrated into the X platform (formerly Twitter) as part of an early access program.
The company has already opened signups for the program, but the caveat is that it will be only available to those who have taken the most expensive paid plan of the social networking platform. Those on other plans or using X for free will not get access just yet.
The move comes mere weeks after xAI’s announcement of Grok and is expected to challenge the dominance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been the go-to general-purpose AI assistant for almost a year now.
What to expect from Grok?
While many details remain under wraps, the X posts shared by Musk and his team at xAI indicate that Grok will be a ChatGPT competitor, which will be able to engage in back-and-forth conversations when prompted. It is expected to handle all sorts of queries from users, right from mathematical problems to code challenges.
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However, unlike other players in the AI race, Grok will differentiate with exclusive access to X and its realtime, user-generated posts and information. The model behind the assistant has been trained on billions of posts (formerly called tweets) on X and will have access to the most recent data posted on X, enabling it to provide up-to-date information when asked about a current issue.
Toby Pohlen, one of the founding members of xAI who came from Google Deepmind, notes that the bot currently takes “a few seconds” to analyze information collected from multiple posts and return an answer in the form of a summary.
He says that the company is working to improve the system and the feature should get faster, although it remains unclear how they plan to keep misinformation – which is also pretty common on X – from falling through the cracks.
Beyond responses based on real-time data, Grok AI will also differentiate with add-on features like a dedicated “fun” mode, multi-tasking, shareable chats and feedback for conversations. The fun mode will be the most interesting of all as it is expected to give Grok a distinct personality where it will be able to hold more engaging conversations with a touch of sarcasm and humor.
Meanwhile, with the other three capabilities, users will be able to have multiple conversations with Grok on the same window, share those conversations outside of the platform through a link and provide detailed feedback to xAI on the quality of individual conversations, allowing the company to improve the bot over time.
For every feedback with an optimal response, the users will get what xAI calls a “feedback score.”
How to access Grok AI?
xAI has set up a dedicated website for Grok, which directs users to sign up for the early access program.
Here’s the deal: anyone can log in with their X account to sign up for this program, but the initial access will only be provided to those who have a verified profile with an X Premium Plus subscription (formerly Twitter Blue) that costs $16 USD/month.
If a user with this subscription enrolls, they should get access to the chatbot sometime this week. Musk notes that they are opening access in blocks, prioritized by when a user signed up for the subscription.
The billionaire also plans to bring a dedicated Grok tab on X to make it easier for early users to chat with the AI assistant. The move is expected to boost user engagement on the platform, although it remains unclear when the company will go beyond verified users. Musk bought X for $44 billion in 2022.
Regardless of timelines, one thing’s pretty clear: xAI is moving very quickly to take Grok mainstream. They started working on the assistant just about three months ago and are now in the process of making it available – while focusing on improving the system and its responses at the same time. If anything, we can expect the chatbot to get better and faster over the next few months, ultimately leading to widespread availability.
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Author: Shubham Sharma
Source: Venturebeat
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
