Elon Musk has debuted the first product from his artificial intelligence company, xAI. Called “Grok,” Musk says the AI chatbot will have a “rebellious streak” and answer “spicy questions” that other AI chatbots like ChatGPT might avoid.
Unlike other AI chatbots, xAI says that Grok will have access to real-time information about the world, which it will obtain by pulling data from the X/Twitter platform. “It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems,” per xAI’s announcement post.
Elon Musk’s Halloween costume (Taylor Hill /Getty)
The announcement also states that xAI is designed to be useful to “people of all backgrounds and political views.” The emphasis on catering to all political views capitalizes on one of the critiques of ChatGPT, the market leading chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, with its documented leftist bias.
In a post on X/Twitter, owner Elon Musk posted a demonstration Grok prompt, showcasing its ability to pull current information.
Example of Grok vs typical GPT, where Grok has current information, but other doesn’t pic.twitter.com/hBRXmQ8KFi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2023
Grok is still in beta testing, meaning only a select number of users have access to it. “Grok is still a very early beta product – the best we could do with 2 months of training – so expect it to improve rapidly with each passing week with your help,” said Musk on Twitter.
xAI said Grok is “modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and will be trained to answer “almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask.”
The word “grok” was invented by the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 work Stranger in a Strange Land. In the book, the term is presented as a word from the Martian language with no direct English translation, but is generally understood to mean a deep understanding.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.