Grok chatbot, now available to Premium subscribers

X expands access to its Grok chatbot, previously available only to Premium+ subscribers, to Premium tier users.

Elon Musk has promised to make the Grok AI chatbot politically neutral. Know details. (Bloomberg)

Social network X has expanded access to its xAI's Grok chatbot, making it available to Premium tier subscribers following an announcement by Elon Musk last month. According to the company's support page, only Premium and Premium+ users in select regions will be able to interact with the chatbot.

Access for Premium Tier Subscribers

Previously, Grok was exclusively accessible to Premium+ users, who paid either $16 per month or a $168 annual subscription fee. With this update, users on the $8 per month plan can now engage with the chatbot. Grok offers users two modes of interaction: "Regular mode" and "Fun mode." Like other Large Language Model (LLM) products, Grok comes with labels indicating potential inaccuracies in its responses, reported techcrunch.

Grok's Role in Summarizing News Stories

Recent updates to Grok include a new explore view feature, allowing users to access summaries of trending news stories. Notably, Grok goes beyond mere summarization by generating headlines, as evidenced by a Mashable article where the chatbot produced a fake headline about Iran striking Tel Aviv with heavy missiles.

Elon Musk's push to expand Grok's user base likely aims to position it as a competitor to other conversational AI products like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Musk has been openly critical of OpenAI's practices, even suing the company in March over its departure from its non-profit goals. In response, OpenAI has sought to dismiss Musk's claims and released email exchanges between Musk and the company.

Last month, xAI made Grok open-source but did not provide details about the training data used. This move has raised questions about transparency in the model's development process and the availability of training data, as highlighted by concerns voiced by my colleague Devin Coldewey.

X's decision to extend access to Grok chatbot to Premium subscribers reflects Elon Musk's ambition to challenge established players in the conversational AI landscape while raising questions about transparency and accountability in AI development.

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