Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot has officially removed its paywall, granting free access to all users. Grok made its public appearance in 2023, courtesy of Musk’s xAI, and was seamlessly woven into the fabric of X, previously known as Twitter. However, access to the chatbot was conditioned upon users securing an X premium subscription.
On Friday, several users observed the modification, which enables non-premium subscribers to transmit up to ten messages to Grok every two hours.
Grok is a “humorous AI assistant,” that was introduced by xAI last year. However, it was exclusively accessible to premium subscribers for a price starting at $8 a month or $84 a year. Musk’s xAI initiated the testing of a free variant of the AI tool in specific regions like New Zealand last month.
Making Grok more accessible is expected to potentially enable it to compete with the free chatbot images that are already available.
Grok is renowned for its conversational capabilities, but it also functions as a versatile AI assistant. It can help users in the research and explanation of trending topics, provide coding support, and freely manage customer inquiries for business users.
The AI chatbot is also a generative AI model that is trained on tens of thousands of GPUs using the data available on X.
Although xAI has not yet released a formal statement certifying Grok’s availability for all users, many users have shared their subscription-free experiences with Grok.
However, since this feature is accessible to all users, it is subject to certain restrictions.
Non-premium users can interact with the AI tool by asking up to 10 questions every two hours, but according to the chatbot’s standards, they are limited to three image analyses and four images generated each day.
Subscribers of X’s Premium and Premium+ plans, priced at $7 and $14 a month, respectively, get extended access, including the option to ask up to 50 questions every day.
The decision to make Grok AI freely accessible has intensified competition among chatbots, including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
ChatGPT 4, the most recent version, enables users to pose 10 inquiries every five hours, although both are conversational AIs. In contrast, Grok users who are not paying subscribers are permitted to pose ten inquiries to the chatbot every two hours.
Although ChatGPT’s conversation style is predominantly formal, Grok AI is more inclined toward an informal style, as users have noted.
Additionally, several users have asserted that the tool addresses inquiries that ChatGPT fails to address. Grok can access real-time data, whereas ChatGPT primarily utilizes pre-trained data.
This update is timely, as xAI, Musk’s AI-focused venture, has recently received $6 billion in funding, resulting in a valuation of over $40 billion. A portion of these funds are being allocated to the expansion of xAI’s supercomputer facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Colossus, a potent supercomputer, is housed at the facility and is essential to Musk’s AI ambitions as he endeavors to compete with OpenAI.
