Grok is a

generative artificial intelligence Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI, GenAI, or GAI) is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models machine learning, learn the underlying p ...

chatbot A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...

developed by xAI. Based on a

large language model A large language model (LLM) is a language model consisting of a neural network with many parameters (typically billions of weights or more), trained on large quantities of unlabelled text using self-supervised learning. LLMs emerged around 2018 an ...

(LLM), it was developed as an initiative by

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...

. The chatbot is advertised as "having a sense of humor" and direct access to X. It is currently under

beta test A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

ing and is available with X Premium.

Background

Musk co-founded the AI research organization

OpenAI OpenAI is an artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promo ...

with

Sam Altman Samuel H. Altman ( ; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator. Early life and education Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mo ...

in 2015. Musk left the company's board in 2018, saying of his decision that he "didn't agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do". OpenAI went on to launch

ChatGPT ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) with both supervised and ...

in 2022, and

GPT-4 Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) is a multimodal large language model created by OpenAI and the fourth in its GPT series. It was released on March 14, 2023, and has been made publicly available in a limited form via ChatGPT Plus, ...

in March 2023. That month, Elon Musk was one of the individuals to sign an open letter from the

Future of Life Institute The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization that works to reduce global catastrophic and existential risks facing humanity, particularly existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The Institute's work is ma ...

calling for a six-month pause in the development of any AI software more powerful than GPT-4. In April 2023, Elon Musk said in an interview on ''

Tucker Carlson Tonight ''Tucker Carlson Tonight'' is an American talk show and current affairs program hosted by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on the television network Fox News. The show premiered in November 2016 and includes political commentary, monol ...

'' that he intended to develop an AI chatbot called "TruthGPT", which he described as "a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe". He expressed concern to Carlson that ChatGPT was being "trained to be

politically correct ''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...

". TruthGPT would later become known as "Grok", a verb coined by

Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...

in his 1961 science-fiction novel ''

Stranger in a Strange Land ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by ...

'' to describe a form of understanding.

History

In November 2023, xAI began previewing Grok as a chatbot to selected people, with participation in the early access program being limited to paid X Premium users. It was announced that once the bot was out of early beta, it would only be available to higher tier X Premium+ subscribers. At the time of the preview, xAI described the chatbot as "a very early beta product – the best we could do with 2 months of training" that could "improve rapidly with each passing week". In December 2023 the Silicon Valley start-up Curio launched a range of AI-powered children's toys, including a rocket-shaped character named Grok. The toy is voiced by Musk's ex-girlfriend

Grimes Claire Elise Boucher (; born March 17, 1988), known professionally as Grimes, is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Her early work has been described as extending from "lo-fi R&B" to futuristic dance-pop, and has in ...

, who is also an investor in the start-up, but the product is unrelated to the xAI service. On March 11, 2024, Musk posted on X that the language model would go open source within a week and six days later, on March 17, Grok-1 became partially open source. Disclosed were the networks architecture and its weight parameters.Matthew S. Smith
''Grokking X.ai’s Grok: Real Advance or Just Real Troll?''
In: ''IEEE Spectrum'', March 24, 2024. Retrieved May 30, 2024. On March 17, 2024, Grok-1 was

open sourced Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

under the Apache-2.0 license. On March 26, 2024, Musk announced that Grok would be enabled for premium subscribers, not just those on the higher-end tier, Premium+. On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, with "improved reasoning capabilities" and a context length of 128,000 tokens. On April 4, 2024, an update to X's "Explore" page included summaries of breaking news stories written by Grok, a task previously assigned to a human curation team. On April 12, 2024, Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) was announced. Grok-1.5V is able to process a wide variety of visual information, including documents, diagrams, graphs, screenshots, and photographs. On May 4, 2024, Grok became available in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, that being the only country in Europe to support Grok at the moment due to the impending

Artificial Intelligence Act The Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) is a proposed regulation by the European Commission which aims to introduce a common regulatory and legal framework for artificial intelligence. Its scope encompasses all sectors (except for military), an ...

rules in the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

. Grok was later reviewed by the EU and was released on May 16, 2024. On August 14, 2024, Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini were announced, with upgraded performance and reasoning, and

image generation An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

capability using FLUX.1 by Black Forest Labs. Grok-2 mini is a “small but capable sibling” of Grok-2 that “offers a balance between speed and answer quality”, according to xAI, and was released on the same day of the announcement. Grok-2 was released six days later, on August 20.

Versions

The following table lists the versions of Grok, describing the innovations and improvements in each version:

Features

Tone of responses

An xAI statement described the chatbot as having been designed to "answer questions with a bit of wit" and as having "a rebellious streak". It said that bot had been "modeled after ''

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it ...

'', so intended to answer almost anything". An extract shared by an X employee showed Grok being asked to answer the question "When is it appropriate to listen to Christmas music?" in a vulgar manner, and responding "whenever the hell you want" and adding that those who disagree should "shove a candy cane up their ass and mind their own damn business". The chatbot defaults to its "fun mode", self-described as "edgy", and by ''

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or Habit (psychology), habit generally considered immorality, immoral, sinful, crime, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refe ...

'' as "incredibly cringey." It can be set to "regular mode" where it does not do this. Elizabeth Lopatto of ''

The Verge ''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media' ...

'' criticized the product, describing it as "unfunny" and comparing its answers to the risqué party game ''

Cards Against Humanity ''Cards Against Humanity'' is an adult party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements, using words or phrases typically deemed offensive, risqué, or politically incorrect, printed on playing cards. It has been compared to th ...

''. Lopatto critiqued the bot's accuracy and the decision to train it on X posts, and noted that while the chatbot could be aggressive in tone, it never turned that aggression on the question-asker in a way that a "genuinely funny" person would.

Political stance

Musk has claimed that the bot is not "

woke ''Woke'' ( ) is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination". Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sex ...

", unlike its competitors. In response to

, the CEO of

developer

, Musk said "the danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly". Musk has marketed the chatbot as being more willing to answer "spicy" questions than other AI systems, sharing a screenshot of Grok giving instructions on how to manufacture

cocaine Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly used recreationally for its euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from the leaves of two Coca species native to South Am ...

. Musk noted that Grok's responses were limited to information already publicly available on the web, which could also be found with regular browser searching. Following the chatbot's December 2023 launch to Premium+ subscribers, Grok was found give

progressive Progressive may refer to: Politics * Progressivism, a political philosophy in support of social reform ** Progressivism in the United States, the political philosophy in the American context * Progressive realism, an American foreign policy pa ...

answers on questions about

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

, and

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

identities. After research scientist David Rozado claimed to have applied the

Political Compass A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions. The expressions polit ...

test to Grok and found its responses to be

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in so ...

and

libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...

– even slightly more so than ChatGPT – Musk responded saying that xAI would be taking "immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral".

Accuracy

Testing Grok in December 2023, ''

'' Jules Roscoe found that it was returning misinformation and false timelines when asked about news events, such as wrongly claiming that the

Israel–Hamas war An armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups has been taking place chiefly in and around the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023. On that day, Palestinian militant groups launched a surprise attack on southern Is ...

had reached a ceasefire in early October when it had not. When reviewing the chatbot's "fun" mode, ''Vice'' magazine found that the setting resulted in "

both sides ''Both Sides'' is the fifth solo studio album by English singer-songwriter Phil Collins. Featuring an adult-oriented soft rock-based sound, the release came out in October 1993 by Atlantic in the US and in November by Virgin in the UK. Colli ...

" responses when asked about debunked conspiracy theories such as

Pizzagate "Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police. In March 2016, the per ...

, where its regular mode would identify the theories as false. Since April 2024, Grok has been used to generate summaries of breaking news stories on X. When a large number of verified users began to spread false stories about Iran having attacked Israel on April 4 (nine days before the

2024 Iranian strikes in Israel On 13 April 2024, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian military, Iranian Armed Forces, in collaboration with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Lebanon, Lebanese militant g ...

), Grok treated the story as real and created a headline and paragraph-long description of the event. Days later it misunderstood many users joking about the

solar eclipse A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six mo ...

with the summarized headline "Sun's Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled".

Image generation

The capacity to generate images using FLUX.1 was added in August 2024, with ''The Verge'' reporting that the kinds of prompts that would be "immediately blocked" on other services seemed to be permitted by Grok. Their journalist was able to produce images of named politicians, celebrities, copyrighted cartoon characters, terrorism and drug use from the chatbot, saying that the only request to be rejected was to "generate an image of a naked woman". Users on X claimed to be able to bypass what limitations existed by rephrasing prompts, generating images of Elon Musk and Mickey Mouse shooting children.

References

{{reflist 2023 establishments in the United States 2023 software Chatbots Elon Musk Twitter Large language models