Grok chatbot now accessible for Premium subscribers

Social network X has announced that its xAI’s Grok chatbot is now accessible to Premium tier subscribers. The chatbot will only be available to Premium and Premium+ users in certain regions, as stated on the company’s support page. This expansion comes after an announcement made by Elon Musk last month.

Access for Premium level subscribers

Previously, Grok was exclusively available to Premium+ users, who paid either $16 per month or a $168 annual fee. With this update, users on the $8/month plan can now interact with the chatbot. Grok offers users two modes of interaction: “regular mode” and “fun mode”. Like other Large Language Model (LLM) products, Grok has labels to indicate potential inaccuracies in its responses, reports techcrunch.

Grok’s role in the news summary

Grok’s recent updates include a new research view feature that allows users to access summaries of trending news. In particular, Grok goes beyond mere summarization to generate headlines, as evidenced by a Mashable article in which a chatbot produced a fake headline about Iran striking Tel Aviv with heavy missiles.

Elon Musk’s push to expand Grok’s user base is likely to position it as a competitor to other conversational AI products such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Musk has openly criticized OpenAI’s practices and even sued the company in March for deviating from its non-profit goals. In response, OpenAI has attempted to dismiss Musk’s claims and released email exchanges between Musk and the company.

Last month, XAI open-sourced Grok, but did not disclose the training data used. This move has raised questions about the transparency of the model development process and the availability of training data, as highlighted by concerns expressed by my colleague Devin Coldewey.

X’s decision to expand access to the Grok chatbot to Premium subscribers reflects Elon Musk’s effort to challenge established players in the conversational AI world and raises questions about the transparency and accountability of AI development.