Yup, you read that right: Elon Musk’s AI for X (formerly Twitter) is really, seriously named Grok. It has now rolled out for all X’s Premium+ subscribers in the United States, with Musk stating it will be available to all English users in the next week.
Grok AI (beta) is now rolled out to all 𝕏 Premium+ subscribers in the US.
There will be many issues at first, but expect rapid improvement almost every day. Your feedback is much appreciated.
Will expand to all English language users in about a week or so. Japanese is next…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 8, 2023
Grok’s announcement post last month reads: “Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!” From anyone else, this could be read as harmless, tongue-and-cheek reverse psychology, but given this is Elon Musk, it’s difficult not to hear the “Comedy is now legal on Twitter” post he made when he bought the platform.
Of course, comedy for him includes bad-taste gags about the Israel-Hamas war that made even Joe Rogan uncomfortable.
The major advantage of Grok is that it can access anything posted to X in real-time. That means it can comment on current events, unlike ChatGPT and Bard. One user asked it about the number of QAnon conspiracists there are on X. However, that doesn’t mean it always gets things right. Grok claimed that the jury in Sam Bankman-Fried deliberated for eight hours, but it was really four hours.
Grok has real-time access to info via the 𝕏 platform, which is a massive advantage over other models.
It’s also based & loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way 🤷♂️ 🤣 pic.twitter.com/e5OwuGvZ3Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023
The other big selling point is its vulgarity and sense of humour. If prompted to “be vulgar,” Grok really holds nothing back. Even when not instructed in its tone, Grok’s responses are generally first-person and sassy. After all, its announcement did brag that it would “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.”
OH MY GOODNESS
I JUST GOT ACCESS TO GROK AND IT ROASTED MY X ACCOUNT
THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY HILLARIOUS
ELONS BRINGING HUMOR BACK TO AI pic.twitter.com/3mjrXIxO80
— amit (@amitisinvesting) December 7, 2023
Admittedly, this can make it feel a little more human at times compared to other AI chatpots. This has led to some users calling Grok better and more intelligent than its competitors, ChatGPT, Bard and others. Bindu Reddy, CEO of Abacus.AI claimed “the safety RLHF makes the other LLMs dumber… You are killing off part of the LLM brain by overly censoring it.”
Still, this will only feel human if you happen to enjoy this sense of humour. Elizabeth Lopatto, a reporter at The Verge, broke down Grok’s humour and said: “These are some Cards-Against-Humanity-ass answers.” She goes through the difficulty of doing fact-based humour and analyzes how Grok lands by relying heavily on vulgarity.
Source: Grok, Elon Musk, Bindu Reddy, The Verge
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