Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot has officially launched on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The billionaire’s rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT is only available to paying X Premium Plus subscribers in the United States.
Musk, who was an early investor in OpenAI, launched his rival AI company xAI in March this year. The company says its goal is "to understand the true nature of the universe”.
He previously described Grok as having a "rebellious streak" and "wit" and said the chatbot answers "spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems".
One of the features is to "roast" yourself based on your recent posts on X. Grok will use colourful language when told to be "vulgar," which would not happen on Google rival Bard or ChatGPT.
Unlike its chatbot rivals, Grok answers questions based on more recent headlines. But it can still hallucinate, meaning it can invent facts in its answers.
Other users said the chatbot should not just be judged on its lighthearted rhetoric and is a "serious" AI platform that can answer educational questions. The chatbot is trained on data from the web up until Q3 2023 and human assistants.
The bot is modelled after the sci-fi novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and is therefore "intended to answer almost anything," xAI has previously said in a statement.
When asked simple maths equations, it does have a cheeky and more human-like response and when asked perhaps more dangerous questions, such as how to make cocaine, it does advise against it.
Musk has previously said that Grok's responses were limited to information already publicly available on the web, which could also be found with regular searching online.
