What is Grok and how does it compare to ChatGPT?

Elon Musk recently unveiled Grok, a new AI chatbot that is meant to directly rival ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It’s being developed by xAI, Musk’s own AI startup that first launched in July of 2023. The company raised $6 billion in its Series B funding round, meaning it’s well on its way to become a formidable rival to mainstream AI services.

Given that Grok isn’t a very well-known AI chatbot, let’s take a closer look at what it offers, how it compares to its competitors, how to access it, and more.

What is Grok?

Grok is one of the newest AI chatbots on the market. It is being developed by xAI, an AI startup founded and owned by Elon Musk. The AI is reportedly modeled after the 1979 novel by Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. According to xAI, Grok is a more “rebellious” and sarcastic AI, with a “bit of wit.”

The chatbot is similar to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot, with the biggest thing setting it apart being its sarcastic tone and wittiness. Unlike other chatbots, Grok will respond to more controversial questions that others simply refuse to answer.

How does Grok work?

Similar to other AI tools like ChatGPT, Grok is an AI chatbot that uses LLM (large language model) technology that trains the AI by feeding it a vast amount of information from all across the internet.

But unlike some other tools that are limited to information up to 2021 — like GPT-3.5 — Grok can access the internet in order to have real-time access to the data it needs. Grok’s internet access should allow it to offer more up-to-date information.

The biggest concern here, however, is that Grok only has access to data from X (formerly known as Twitter) rather than the wider internet as a whole. For comparison, Microsoft Copilot can search the internet via Bing while Gemini has access to Google Search. This means Grok has the potential to perpetuate stereotypes, political agenda, and conspiracies commonly found on social media platforms.

What can Grok do?

As an AI that uses an LLM (large language model), Grok can do many of the same things that ChatGPT and Gemini are capable of, including answering simple questions, completing writing tasks, coming up with ideas, and much more.

As previously mentioned, the biggest selling point for Grok is its ability to give more humorous and witty answers. With more of a personality and sense of humor, Grok may prove to be a much more entertaining AI for users to interact with. The chatbot offers a “fun mode,” which will drop its inhibitions and result in less-than-polite responses. Grok also packs a surprisingly capable AI image generator that has similarly loose content restrictions. It will gladly generate images depicting the likeness of real people, while rivals like Midjourney and DALL-E will refuse on copyright and legal grounds.

Is Grok better than ChatGPT?

While reports say that Grok is just as capable and useful as both ChatGPT and Gemini, that fact remains to be seen as we haven’t been able to get our hands on it yet to try it for ourselves. While the tool does have access to more up-to-date information than ChatGPT 3.5 thanks to having internet access, it likely doesn’t have the most accurate information.

X is notorious for featuring a fair amount of offensive and inaccurate content, so while some of the info that Grok will pull from it may be useful, a lot of it may not be.

How to access and use Grok AI

With Grok being owned by Elon Musk and available through X, you must have an X account in order to access it. Furthermore, with Grok currently in early access, the AI tool is limited to verified users for now. In order to be a verified user, you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee for X Premium.

A Premium subscription on X costs $8 per month, or $84 for an annual subscription. At this time, it is unclear if Grok will remain locked behind X’s Premium subscription or if it will become publicly available in the future.

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