Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, has recently launched a new AI company called xAI. The company’s goal is to “understand the true nature of the universe” by creating an artificial intelligence chatbot that can answer almost any question and even suggest what questions to ask.
The chatbot, named Grok, is inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a cult sci-fi comedy by British author Douglas Adams. Grok is designed to have a bit of wit and a rebellious streak, unlike other AI chatbots that are more “woke” and cautious. Grok is not afraid to answer “spicy” questions that other chatbots might avoid, such as how to make cocaine or what Elon Musk thinks of his rivals.
Grok is powered by a large language model called Grok-1, which is based on the latest advances in natural language processing and deep learning. Grok-1 has surpassed some of the benchmarks of GPT-3.5, the model used by ChatGPT, a popular and freely available AI chatbot. Grok-1 can solve middle-school maths problems, generate coherent texts, and understand sarcasm. However, Grok-1 still lags behind the most powerful ChatGPT model, GPT-4, which has not been released to the public yet.
Musk announced the launch of xAI and Grok on his Twitter account, where he also posted some screenshots of his conversations with the chatbot. He said that Grok has real-time access to information via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models. He also joked that he had no idea who could have guided Grok to love sarcasm.
Musk said that Grok is currently in early testing and not available to the general public. He said that Grok will ultimately be released to subscribers of X’s top-tier subscription service, Premium+. He also invited his followers to join a live Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, where he and his team will share more details about xAI and Grok.
Musk’s venture into AI is not surprising, given his interest and involvement in the field for years. He was one of the original backers of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, but he later distanced himself from the company due to disagreements over its direction and partnership with Microsoft. He has also warned about the potential dangers of AI and called for a pause and regulation of “giant AI experiments” that could pose a threat to humanity.
Musk’s new AI chatbot, Grok, promises to be a “rebellious” sidekick that will answer almost anything and even suggest what questions to ask. Whether Grok will be a useful and entertaining companion or a risky and controversial experiment remains to be seen.