What is Grok and how does it compare to ChatGPT?

Elon Musk’s Grok is a relatively new AI chatbot that directly rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It’s being developed by xAI, Musk’s very own AI startup that launched in July of 2023. The company raised $6 billion in its Series B and C funding rounds, meaning it’s well on its way to become a formidable rival to mainstream AI giants.

Grok is unique because it uses real-time information to formulate its responses. But given that Grok isn’t a very well-known AI chatbot, let’s take a closer look at what it offers, how it compares to its competitors, how to access it, and more.

What is Grok?

Grok is primarily a natural language chatbot developed by xAI, an AI startup founded and owned by Elon Musk. The chatbot was reportedly modeled after the 1979 novel by Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. According to xAI, Grok is a more “rebellious” and sarcastic AI, with a “bit of wit.”

The chatbot is functionally similar to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot. However, the biggest thing setting Grok apart is its sarcastic tone and wittiness. Grok will respond to controversial questions that others simply refuse to answer.

How does Grok work?

Similar to other AI tools like ChatGPT, Grok is an AI chatbot that uses LLM (large language model) technology that trains the AI by feeding it a vast amount of information from all across the internet. Grok can also access the internet in order to have real-time access to the data it needs.

Grok once solely relied on data from the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), but it can now access the wider internet too. For comparison, Microsoft Copilot can search the internet via Bing while Gemini has access to Google Search. Grok’s reliance of tweets has the potential to perpetuate stereotypes, political agenda, and conspiracies commonly found on social media platforms. However, it’s also much more likely to know about recent events like breaking news since X is often the first source of information.

Social media is notorious for featuring a fair amount of offensive and inaccurate content, so while some of the info that Grok will pull from it may be useful, a lot of it may not be. Luckily, newer Grok releases have fared extremely well on AI leaderboards and can search the internet. As such, it tends to do a good job of separating fact from fiction. But even the best chatbot can slip up from time to time, so it’s always worth double checking its responses.

What can Grok do and how does it compare vs ChatGPT?

As an AI chatbot that uses an LLM (large language model), Grok can do many of the same things that ChatGPT and Gemini are capable of, including answering simple questions, completing writing tasks, coming up with ideas, and much more.

You can summon Grok in response to any tweet to ask follow-up questions, such as in the following example.

As previously mentioned, the biggest selling point for Grok is its ability to give more humorous and witty answers. With more of a personality and sense of humor, Grok may prove to be a much more entertaining AI for users to interact with. The chatbot offers a “fun mode,” which will drop its inhibitions and result in less-than-polite responses. Grok also packs a surprisingly capable AI image generator that has similarly loose content restrictions. It will gladly generate images depicting the likeness of real people, while rivals like Midjourney and DALL-E will refuse on copyright and legal grounds.

How to access and use Grok AI

With Grok being owned by Elon Musk and available through X, you must have an account on the social media platform in order to access it. Once logged in, look for Grok in the sidebar on desktop or bottom bar on mobile and you can start chatting right away. You can also download the standalone Grok app on Android and iOS, which offers additional features like a real-time voice chat.

While early versions of Grok required a verified X account, that’s no longer the case – at least for now. If xAI decides to reinstate that restriction, expect to pay a monthly subscription to use the chatbot.

Another way to summon Grok is by responding to a tweet with a simple @grok mention followed by your message. The downside of this method is that the chatbot will take the tweets as context in addition to your prompt, but it can also work in your favor at times. For example, you can ask “@grok Is this true?” to fact check a particular tweet.

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