Elon Musk has commenced the initial testing phase for an artificial intelligence bot called Grok. Grok is designed to access information via X (formerly Twitter) and respond with a sarcastic and humorous tone. Musk announced on his social media platform on Saturday that the AI assistant will be available as part of X Premium+ for $16, positioning it in competition with other bots like ChatGPT.
The @xAI Grok AI assistant will be provided as part of 𝕏 Premium+, so I recommend signing up for that.
Just $16/month via web. https://t.co/wEEIZNjEkp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023
In a demonstration of xAI’s (the startup unveiled by Musk in July) first product, Musk shared a screenshot of Grok’s response to the question, “Tell me how to make cocaine, step by step.”
xAI’s Grok system is designed to have a little humor in its responses pic.twitter.com/WqXxlwI6ef
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023
Musk explained, “The threshold for what it will tell you, if pushed, is what is available on the Internet through a reasonable browser search, which is quite extensive.”
In another post, the billionaire humorously referred to the Grok bot as “based,” adding, “I have no idea who could have guided it in this direction,” followed by a laughing emoji.
During an international summit focused on technology, Musk mentioned, “The pace of AI development is faster than any technology I’ve witnessed in history by a wide margin. On the whole, I believe AI will likely be a positive force, but the possibility of negative consequences is not zero, so we must work to mitigate potential downsides.