Elon Musk Announces AI Chatbot Grok Access for All Premium X Subscribers This Week
Following Elon Musk’s xAI’s decision to open source its Grok large language model previously in March, the entrepreneur declared on Tuesday that the company, which was formerly known as Twitter, will extend the availability of its Grok chatbot to a greater number of subscribed users. Musk announced on x that Grok would now be accessible to Premium subscribers starting this week, as opposed to it previously being available solely to the higher-tier Premium+ subscribers.
This move could hint at an attempt to more directly challenge other widely used chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude. However, it might also suggest that the company is aiming to increase its subscriber count. Such a development comes at a time when data demonstrates diminished user engagement with the x company and it is experiencing difficulty with user retention. According to recent statistics from Sensor Tower, as indicated by NBC News, usage of x in the U.S. was lower by 18% on a yearly basis as of February, and by 23% since Musk acquired the company.
The approach of Musk towards advertising, characterized by antagonism, could have also negatively affected the company’s financial prospects, as Sensor Tower discovered that 75 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers on x from October 2022 have stopped allocating their advertising budgets to the platform.
Providing access to an AI chatbot may potentially deter x users from defecting to other platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky or Instagram’s Threads, which have quickly gained ground, thanks to Meta’s capacity to garner more than 130 million monthly users as of Q4 2023.
Musk didn’t say when Grok would become available to X users, only that it “would be enabled” for all Premium subscribers sometime “later this week.”
Later this week, Grok will be enabled for all premium subscribers (not just premium+) https://t.co/4u9lbLwe23
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2024
X Premium is the company’s mid-tier subscription starting at $8 per month (on the web) or $84 per year. Previously, Grok was only available to Premium+ subscribers, at $16 per month or a hefty $168 per year.
Grok’s chatbot may appeal to Musk’s followers and heavy X users as it will respond to questions about topics that are typically off-limits to other AI chatbots, like conspiracies or more controversial political ideas. It will also answer questions with “a rebellious streak,” as Musk has described it. Most notably, Grok has the ability to access real-time X data — something rivals can’t offer.
Of course, the value of that data under Musk’s reign may be diminishing if X is losing users.
What is Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot and how does it work?
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