Grok is the Latest ChatGPT Competitor

The team at x.ai have announced “Grok”, making it ChatGPT’s latest competitor. It’s not yet widely available, so we can only report what x.ai itself says about it. Unfortunately, the press release announcement offers few specifics beyond an odd mission statement.

What is it?

x.ai is touting Grok as “an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!”

It’s purported mission is to “assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge”. That’s all well and good, but x.ai also claims that it is an AI with a “rebellious streak”, that will answer questions with wit and humor. While this isn’t entirely antithetical to the lofty goal of being a reliable research assistant, it does raise some worries.

One interesting standout feature of Grok is that it has real-time access to the content on x.com. Not only is this valuable training data, it means that Grok may be a very good resource for those interested in keeping up to date with breaking news stories.

x.ai admits that, like all LLM’s that are basically text prediction algorithms, Grok may generate “false or contradictory.” But they’re working on this issue. Read the full press release here for more details.

Grok is only available to a limited number of users at this point. So, we’ll have to wait and see what it’s capable of. The only thing we can say for sure right now is that they should have called it “Grox”.