Elon Musk's AI venture, xAI, has revealed its latest creation, Grok, which takes inspiration from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Grok is designed to be a smart, quirky AI with a penchant for answering unconventional questions. It has access to a wealth of data from X, giving it a competitive edge in terms of information accuracy. While Grok is currently in the early beta phase and only available to a select group of users, there is a waitlist for those interested in testing it. Musk's plan is to eventually integrate Grok into X Premium+, offered for a monthly fee of $16.
Musk appears to be positioning xAI as a formidable competitor to established companies like OpenAI. Initial tests indicate that Grok outperforms other models in its category on tasks such as middle school math problems and Python coding, although it lags behind bots with larger data repositories.
The term "Grok" was originally coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science fiction novel "Stranger in a Strange Land." It conveys a sense of deep empathy or intuitive understanding, although its precise meaning is still debated.
Founded in July, xAI boasts a team composed of former employees from OpenAI and DeepMind and continues to hire for various roles. The company's mission is to advance our collective understanding of the universe through artificial intelligence, with a strong emphasis on inclusivity and accommodating diverse perspectives.
Grok serves as a public testing ground for xAI's approach, breaking away from the trend of overly "politically correct" AI systems.