Grok – the AI chatbot by Elon Musk’s xAI – is now being made available to everyone at no extra cost. The AI startup made the announcement in a post on X, making the chatbot more accessible for free to all users of the social media platform.
“Since launching Grok-2 in August, we have been hard at work improving Grok on 𝕏, adding new features like web search, citations, and our recent image generator, Aurora. Over the past few weeks we have been quietly testing a new version of the Grok-2 model,” xAI had noted in a blog post last week. There is a catch, though – while Grok-2 is now available for free, xAI continues to offer premium features for subscribers of X’s Premium and Premium+ plans. These include higher usage limits and priority access to upcoming upgrades and capabilities.
Grok is now free for everyone
Our AI assistant is faster, sharper, and includes all new-image generation. Available for free on 𝕏 today.
Try Grok now: https://t.co/Tj0afLp5u7
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
— xAI (@xai) December 14, 2024
According to the company, the new model is faster (by three times) and more capable than its predecessor, coming with greater accuracy and improved multilingual capabilities. The chatbot can now interpret user prompts more effectively and generate responses that are contextually relevant. X users will now have access to a dedicated “Grok” button on their timelines, which serves as an interactive gateway to explore trending topics, contextualize posts, and gain real-time insights.
One of the most notable updates to Grok-2 is the inclusion of web search and citation functionalities. These features allow the chatbot to draw from both the content on the microblogging platform (using the new Grok button) and broader internet sources, ensuring users receive accurate, timely responses to their queries, and that the chatbot is not making up information and providing inaccurate responses. “Grok now combines real-time insights from 𝕏 with web search for timely, accurate answers. New citation features let you verify info or explore sources with ease,” xAI announced on X.
In addition to this, xAi is also bringing creative tools powered by Grok-2. The “Draw Me” feature, which xAi describes as its “advanced new image model” allows users to generate personalized avatars using AI. This option is accessible through the “Create your version with Grok” button on user profiles. Going forward, the capability for image generation (with Aurora) will also come to Grok’s API, which will be made available to a wider audience as well. xAI notes that it shall be priced at “$2/1M input tokens and $10/1M output tokens.”
