X expands Grok AI chatbot access to Premium subscribers
What's the story
X has expanded the availability of its Grok chatbot, a product of Elon Musk's xAI, to include Premium subscribers.
The announcement was made on the company's support page, stating that Premium (in addition to Premium+) members in certain regions can now engage with the chatbot.
This move aligns with Musk's previous statement about increasing access to Grok for more paying users.
Subscription changes
Lower-tier subscribers can access Grok
Musk's xAI announced Grok last year. Up until now, the chatbot was exclusively available to Premium+ subscribers who paid $16 monthly or $168 annually.
However, the recent update has extended this privilege to users with an $8 monthly subscription.
This change broadens the user base that can engage with the chatbot, making it more accessible to a wider range of X's paying customers.
Functionality
The chatbot features two interaction modes
Grok offers two interaction modes: "Regular mode" and "Fun mode."
Like other Large Language Models (LLM), it features labels, warning users about the potential for inaccurate responses.
Recently, X added a feature that enables Grok to summarize trending news stories, a capability also found in other AI models.
However, Grok takes it a step further by creating headlines as well as summarizing stories.
Market rivalry
Expansion seen as competition to other AI models
Musk's push to increase Grok usage is seen as an attempt to compete with other AI offerings like ChatGPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, or Claude from Anthropic.
He has publicly criticized OpenAI's operations and even filed a lawsuit against the company in March over what he termed a "betrayal" of its non-profit objective.
In response, OpenAI sought dismissal of all his allegations and disclosed email exchanges between him and the organization.
Open-source move
Grok becomes open-source amid transparency concerns
Last month, xAI made Grok open-source but did not disclose any information about the training data.
This decision has raised questions about the transparency of the company's model development process and its training data.
The lack of disclosed information has sparked concerns among observers, highlighting the need for more clarity in AI model development processes.