Grok is a chatbot and AI assistant created by xAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup that Elon Musk established in 2023. Similar to other programs like ChatGPT, Grok can create text and graphics and converse with people. But unlike other chatbots, it can access information in real-time via the web and X (previously Twitter), and it is designed to give clever, “rebellious” replies to inquiries that are controversial and edgy.
Basically, Grok is Musk’s version of ChatGPT, whose creator (OpenAI) he co-founded in 2015 but quit in 2018 following a rumored power dispute with now-CEO Sam Altman. Since then, Musk has denounced ChatGPT as unsafe and excessively left-leaning. Musk claims that xAI is positioned to directly compete with OpenAI, and that its Grok chatbot not only acts as ChatGPT’s “anti-woke” equivalent, but also presents fresh opportunities in the broader field of generative AI.
Grok: What Is It?
Grok is a chatbot and AI assistant created by xAI. Available for free via Grok.com and the Grok mobile app, it was released in November 2023 and is accessible to all X users. Additionally, SuperGrok users on Grok.com and the Grok app, as well as X Premium and X Premium+ subscribers on X, get access to enhanced features and greater use limitations.
A cluster of 200,000 NVIDIA Hopper graphics processing units (GPUs) called xAI’s Colossus supercomputer was used to train Grok 3, the massive language model that drives Grok. Grok 3, which has been improved through reinforcement learning, exhibits “significant improvements in reasoning, mathematics, coding,” and other activities that require following instructions. An early version of the Grok 3 model achieved an Elo score of 1402 on LMArena’s Chatbot Arena scoreboard, demonstrating its superior performance over DeepSeek, Gemini, and GPT 4o models in some academic standards.
Grok 3 and its predecessor models, like other LLMs, were trained using vast volumes of text data that were collected from the internet, ranging from scholarly publications to Wikipedia articles. However, Grok’s direct access to X postings is what sets it apart. According to the business, this offers Grok “real-time knowledge of the world,” giving it a “massive advantage over other models,” as Musk described it.
The DeepSearch and Think capabilities were also introduced with Grok 3. DeepSearch is an AI agent developed by xAI that can reason about contradicting facts or viewpoints and concisely summarize important information. When a query is posed to Grok, it seeks to take consumers “far beyond a browser search,” offering a thorough report of details and context. Grok’s Think button allows users to see the model’s logic and how it arrived at its conclusion. Grok comes with both DeepSearch and Think by default. DeepSearch comes with two options: DeeperSearch, which gives “extended search, more reasoning,” and the normal DeepSearch, which offers “advanced search and reasoning.”
What Makes It Grok?
The term “grok” is said to have come from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction book Stranger in a Strange Land, where the Martian protagonist uses it to describe a deep and intuitive knowledge of something.
Musk wrote “Stranger in a Strange Land” on X the day after the chatbot was revealed, perhaps alluding to Heinlein’s book, even though he has never formally acknowledged the meaning of Grok’s name. By using this term, xAI seems to see Grok as a tool to “assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge,” as stated on its website, rather than merely another chatbot.
One of Musk’s favorite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, served as the inspiration for Grok’s sense of humor and “personality.”
In an interview with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, Musk claimed that the book was actually a philosophical book masquerading as a comedy book. With Grok, xAI is striving to uphold that philosophy while simultaneously following “the truth of the universe,” according to Musk, and ultimately uncovering new truths — moving closer to artificial general intelligence, where a machine is able to learn and reason similarly to (or even more intelligently than) a person.
