May 10th, 2024

Complete Guide to Grok, Elon Musk's New AI

By Rahul Sonwalkar · 9 min read

What is Grok AI?

In a nutshell, Grok is a recently announced Large Language Model and AI chat product engineered by xAI, Elon Musk's new company. Grok AI is meant to be a multi-purpose tool designed to serve up answers and, more impressively, suggest what questions you might consider asking.

Elon Musk's Tweet announcing Grok AI

What is xAI?

xAI is a cutting-edge company founded by Elon Musk, focused on creating artificial intelligence technologies to enhance human scientific exploration and broaden our understanding of the universe. The xAI team is comprised of elite experts who have previously been a part of esteemed institutions like DeepMind, OpenAI, and Google Research, and universities such as the University of Toronto. They are notable for their seminal contributions to AI, including the development of widely utilized techniques like the Adam optimizer and Batch Normalization. Their collective work includes pivotal projects such as AlphaStar, AlphaCode, and even the generational advances seen in GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, positioning xAI at the forefront of AI research and development.

When was Grok announced?

Grok AI was introduced on November 4th, 2023 with an announcement and an accompanying Tweet from xAI & Elon Musk.

The announcement was in the form of a letter from those behind Grok:

"Grok is 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!

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!

A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the 𝕏 platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.

Grok is still a very early beta product – the best we could do with 2 months of training – so expect it to improve rapidly with each passing week with your help.

Thank you,
the xAI Team"

The Origin of "Grok"

The informal verb grok was an invention of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land placed great importance on the concept of grokking. In the book, to grok is to empathize so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them. Elon Musk recently tweeted the name of the book, a clear citing of the origin of the name of his new AI product.

What makes Grok different?

A standout trait of Grok AI is its connection to the 𝕏 platform, which keeps it updated with real-time world knowledge. Further, while many AI systems are engineered to shy away from controversy, Grok AI is trained to tackle even the spiciest of questions without any filters. The tone of Grok is supposed to be more humorous and engaging than other competing products as well.

Grok-1: The Engine Under the Hood

Powering Grok AI is "Grok-1," a state-of-the-art language model. It's the result of four months of tinkering and tweaking by the xAI team. It has surpassed many of its peers in various benchmark tests, achieving results better than OpenAI's ChatGPT-3.5 and roughly equivalent to Anthropic's Claude-2 (although still far below OpenAI's most recent GPT-4 model). The model also reportedly fairs better against popular AI detector tools than competitors.

The Future

Looking ahead, the vision for Grok AI includes making the model multimodal by expanding its capabilities beyond just text. The team envisions a future where Grok can interact with visuals and sounds, enhancing its utility and broadening its application.

How to get access

xAI is offering a limited number of users in the United States the ability to try out their Grok AI Chatbot prototype and provide valuable feedback. You can join the Grok waitlist here.

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