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Grok (chatbot)

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Grok
Developer(s)xAI
Initial releaseNovember 3, 2023; 13 months ago (2023-11-03)[1]
Stable release
Grok-2 / August 13, 2024; 4 months ago (2024-08-13)
Repository
Written inPython, Rust[2]
TypeChatbot
LicenseProprietary
Apache-2.0 (Grok-1)
Websitex.ai/grok

Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. Based on the large language model (LLM) of the same name, it was launched in 2023 as an initiative by Elon Musk.[3] The chatbot is advertised as having a "sense of humor" and direct access to X (formerly Twitter).[4][5] It is currently under beta testing.

Background

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Musk co-founded the AI research organization OpenAI with Sam Altman 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".[6] OpenAI went on to launch ChatGPT in 2022, and GPT-4 in March 2023. That month, Elon Musk was one of the individuals to sign an open letter from the Future of Life Institute calling for a six-month pause in the development of any AI software more powerful than GPT-4.[7]

In April 2023, Elon Musk said in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight 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".[6] He expressed concern to Carlson that ChatGPT was being "trained to be politically correct".[8]

TruthGPT would later become known as "Grok", a verb coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land to describe a form of understanding.[9]

History

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Screenshot of an example of Grok-2 answer describing Wikipedia

In November 2023, xAI began previewing Grok as a chatbot to selected people,[10] with participation in the early access program being limited to paid X Premium users.[11] It was announced that once the bot was out of early beta, it would only be available to higher tier X Premium+ subscribers.[12] 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".[13]

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, who is also an investor in the start-up, but the product is unrelated to the xAI service.[14]

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.[15]

On March 17, 2024, Grok-1 was open sourced under the Apache-2.0 license.[16][17][18]

On March 26, 2024, Musk announced that Grok would be enabled for premium subscribers, not just those on the higher-end tier, Premium+.[19]

On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, with "improved reasoning capabilities" and a context length of 128,000 tokens.[20]

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.[21]

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.[22]

On May 4, 2024, Grok became available in the United Kingdom,[23] that being the only country in Europe to support Grok at the moment due to the impending Artificial Intelligence Act rules in the European Union. Grok was later reviewed by the EU and was released on May 16, 2024.[24]

On August 14, 2024, Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini were announced, with upgraded performance and reasoning, and image generation capability using Flux by Black Forest Labs.[25] 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.[26] Grok-2 was released six days later, on August 20.[27]

On October 28, 2024, Grok received image understanding capabilities.[28]

On November 16, 2024, Grok received web search capabilities.[29]

On November 23, 2024, Grok received PDF understanding capabilities.[30][31]

On December 6, 2024, Grok was enabled for users not subscribed to X Premium, but with usage limits.[32]

On December 9, 2024, Grok received Aurora, a new text-to-image model developed by xAI.[33]

Versions

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

Version Release date Description License
Grok-1 November 2023 The first Grok version. Apache-2.0[16]
Grok-1.5 May 2024[1] An improvement over the Grok-1 version, offering improved reasoning capabilities and a context length of 128,000 tokens.[20] Proprietary
Grok-1.5V April 2024[34] Capable of processing a wide variety of visual information, including documents, diagrams, graphs, screenshots, and photographs.[22] Proprietary
Grok-2 August 2024 Upgraded performance and reasoning over the Grok-1.5 version and image generation capability.[25] Proprietary
Grok-2 mini August 2024 A “small but capable sibling” of Grok-2 that “offers a balance between speed and answer quality,” according to xAI.[26] Proprietary

Features

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Tone of responses

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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, so intended to answer almost anything".[13]

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".[35][36]

The chatbot defaults to its "fun mode", self-described as "edgy", and by Vice as "incredibly cringey." It can be set to "regular mode" where it does not do this.[37]

Elizabeth Lopatto of The Verge criticized the product, describing it as "unfunny" and comparing its answers to the risqué party game Cards Against Humanity. 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.[38]

Political stance

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Musk has claimed that the bot is not "woke", unlike its competitors.[39][40] In response to Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, Musk said "the danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly".[41]

Musk has marketed the chatbot as being more willing to answer "spicy" questions than other AI systems,[13] sharing a screenshot of Grok giving instructions on how to manufacture cocaine.[42][43] 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.[44]

Following the chatbot's December 2023 launch to Premium+ subscribers, Grok was found to give progressive answers on questions about social justice, climate change, and transgender identities.[45] After research scientist David Rozado claimed to have applied the Political Compass test to Grok and found its responses to be left-wing and libertarian – even slightly more so than ChatGPT – Musk responded saying that xAI would be taking "immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral".[46]

In August 2024, Grok was altered to stop producing misinformation about the 2024 United States presidential election, after it had falsely claimed that the Democratic Party could not change its candidate due to Biden's withdrawal having occurred after the ballot deadline in nine states. Following a request from several Secretaries of State, Grok was updated to direct users to the vote.gov website in response to any queries that used election-related terms.[47]

Accuracy

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Testing Grok in December 2023, Vice's 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 had reached a ceasefire in early October when it had not.[37]

When reviewing the chatbot's "fun" mode, Vice magazine found that the setting resulted in "both sides" responses when asked about debunked conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, where its regular mode would identify the theories as false.[37]

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), Grok treated the story as real and created a headline and paragraph-long description of the event.[21] Days later it misunderstood many users joking about the solar eclipse with the summarized headline "Sun's Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled".[48]

Image generation

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The capacity to generate images using Flux 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".[49] 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.[49] In December 2024, Grok received a new text-to-image model named Aurora, developed by xAI.[33]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "About xAI". xAI. Archived from the original on August 14, 2024. Retrieved August 14, 2024.
  2. ^ "Open Release of Grok-1". xAI. Archived from the original on March 17, 2024. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
  3. ^ "Elon Musk has regrets about ChatGPT, saying he's a 'huge idiot' for letting go of OpenAI". Fortune. Archived from the original on November 11, 2023. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
  4. ^ Dean, Jason. "Elon Musk Says His New AI Bot 'Grok' Will Have Sarcasm and Access to X Information". WSJ. Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on November 4, 2023. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  5. ^ "Musk says his new AI chatbot has 'a little humour'". BBC News. November 5, 2023. Archived from the original on November 8, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  6. ^ a b Jackson, Sarah (April 17, 2023). "Elon Musk says he's planning to create a 'maximum truth-seeking AI' that he likes to call 'TruthGPT'". Business Insider. Archived from the original on December 7, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2023.
  7. ^ Knight, Will (March 29, 2023). "In Sudden Alarm, Tech Doyens Call for a Pause on ChatGPT". Wired. Archived from the original on December 7, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2023.
  8. ^ "Elon Musk says he'll create 'TruthGPT' to counter AI 'bias'". The Independent. April 18, 2023. Archived from the original on December 7, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2023.
  9. ^ Cuthbertson, Anthony (November 7, 2023). "How Elon Musk's 'spicy' Grok compares to 'woke' ChatGPT". The Independent. Archived from the original on December 2, 2023. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  10. ^ Picciotto, Rebecca (November 5, 2023). "Elon Musk debuts 'Grok' AI bot to rival ChatGPT, others". CNBC. Archived from the original on November 8, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  11. ^ "xAI Grok". grok.x.ai. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  12. ^ "Elon Musk unveils new sarcasm-loving AI chatbot for premium X subscribers". The Independent. November 6, 2023. Archived from the original on November 6, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  13. ^ a b c xAI. "Announcing Grok!". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on November 5, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  14. ^ Lorenz, Taylor (December 14, 2023). "Grimes is working on an interactive AI toy for kids. Meet Grok". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 15, 2023.
  15. ^ Matthew S. Smith: Grokking X.ai’s Grok: Real Advance or Just Real Troll? In: IEEE Spectrum, March 24, 2024. Retrieved May 30, 2024.
  16. ^ a b David, Emilia (March 18, 2024). "xAI open sources Grok". The Verge. Retrieved March 19, 2024.
  17. ^ "Xai-org/Grok-1". GitHub.
  18. ^ "grok-1 Torrent". Academic Torrents. Retrieved April 8, 2024.
  19. ^ Perez, Sarah (March 26, 2024). "Elon Musk says all Premium subscribers on X will gain access to AI chatbot Grok this week". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 27, 2024.
  20. ^ a b "Announcing Grok-1.5". xAI. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  21. ^ a b Binder, Matt (April 5, 2024). "Elon Musk's X pushed a fake headline about Iran attacking Israel. X's AI chatbot Grok made it up". Mashable. Retrieved April 16, 2024.
  22. ^ a b "Grok-1.5 Vision Preview". xAI. Retrieved April 18, 2024.
  23. ^ @XUK (May 4, 2024). "Welcome to the UK @grok! We're so glad you're here to share your wit, knowledge, and a some advice with our friends across the pond 🫖🇬🇧 Grok is now available in the UK for premium subscribers" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  24. ^ Hutchinson, Andrew (May 15, 2024). "X's Grok AI Chatbot Is Now Available to EU Users". Social Media Today. Archived from the original on May 16, 2024. Retrieved September 20, 2024.
  25. ^ a b Mehta, Ivan (August 14, 2024). "xAI releases Grok-2, adds image generation on X". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 14, 2024.
  26. ^ a b Weatherbed, Jess (August 14, 2024). "xAI's new Grok-2 chatbots bring AI image generation to X". The Verge. Retrieved August 14, 2024.
  27. ^ https://x.com/xDaily/status/1826024911544135774
  28. ^ Mehta, Ivan (October 28, 2024). "Elon Musk's xAI adds image understanding capabilities to Grok". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  29. ^ Nazarov, Yaroslav (November 16, 2024). "Also, we've shipped a v.1 of web search results to Grok". Retrieved November 23, 2024.
  30. ^ Nazarov, Yaroslav (November 23, 2024). "Grok just got a PDF support!". Retrieved November 23, 2024.
  31. ^ Yang, Greg (November 23, 2024). "you can now upload pdfs to grok!". Retrieved November 23, 2024.
  32. ^ Roth, Emma (December 6, 2024). "X's Grok AI chatbot is now available to all users". The Verge. Retrieved December 7, 2024.
  33. ^ a b Wiggers, Kyle (December 7, 2024). "Elon Musk's X gains a new image generator, Aurora". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 7, 2024.
  34. ^ "Grok-1.5 Vision Preview". xAI. April 12, 2024. Retrieved December 5, 2024.
  35. ^ Stanley, Christopher (November 5, 2023). "When is it appropriate to listen to Christmas music". X (Twitter). Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  36. ^ Carter, Tom. "Elon Musk's new AI chatbot sure sounds like a foul-mouthed Twitter troll". Business Insider. Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  37. ^ a b c Roscoe, Jules (December 8, 2023). "Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Pushing Misinformation and Legitimizing Conspiracies". Vice. Archived from the original on December 11, 2023. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  38. ^ Lopatto, Elizabeth (December 8, 2023). "Why is Elon Musk's Grok chatbot so unfunny". theverge. Archived from the original on December 11, 2023. Retrieved December 13, 2023.
  39. ^ Very, Kelby (November 6, 2023). "Elon Musk Unveils 'Grok' AI Chatbot As Alternative To 'Woke' Rivals Like ChatGPT". Yahoo News. Archived from the original on December 2, 2023. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  40. ^ Zeff, Maxwell (November 6, 2023). "Enter 'Grok,' Elon Musk's Anti-Woke Chatbot". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on December 2, 2023. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  41. ^ Cuthbertson, Anthony (November 7, 2023). "How Elon Musk's 'spicy' Grok compares to 'woke' ChatGPT". The Independent. Archived from the original on December 2, 2023. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  42. ^ Musk, Elon (November 4, 2023). "Ask and you shall receive". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  43. ^ Cuthbertson, Anthony (November 7, 2023). "Elon Musk's new AI bot will help you make cocaine which proves it's 'rebellious'". The Independent. Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  44. ^ Musk, Elon (November 4, 2023). "The threshold for what it will tell you, if pushed, is what is available on the Internet via reasonable browser search, which is a lot …". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  45. ^ Tassi, Paul. "Elon Musk's Grok Twitter AI Is Actually 'Woke,' Hilarity Ensues". Forbes. Archived from the original on December 10, 2023. Retrieved December 10, 2023.
  46. ^ Vlamis, Kelsey. "Elon Musk vows to change his AI chatbot after it apparently expressed similar left-wing political views as ChatGPT". Business Insider. Archived from the original on December 10, 2023. Retrieved December 9, 2023.
  47. ^ Vigliarolo, Brandon (August 28, 2024). "Elon Musk reins in Grok AI bot to stop election misinformation". The Register. Retrieved September 1, 2024.
  48. ^ Novak, Matt (April 8, 2024). "Elon Musk's Grok Creates Bizarre Fake News About the Solar Eclipse Thanks to Jokes on X". Gizmodo. Retrieved April 16, 2024.
  49. ^ a b Robertson, Adi (August 14, 2024). "X's new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun". The Verge. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
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