It only makes sense that Elon Musk released his over AI in the form of Grok, as aspirations of making X the “everything app” continue.
This controversial AI is designed to compete with the likes ofChatGPT,GeminiandMidjourney, by offering an AI chatbot with more of a personality than the alternatives on offer.
It was originally only accessed via, and trained on, the X social media platform, but now has its own application. Here’s everything you need to know about Grok AI.
What is Grok?
Grok is a generative AI chatbot developed by xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence startup.
It was originally built atop the Grok-1 model, which was developed over the course of months on a cluster of “tens of thousands” of GPUs andleveraged the Flux.1 modelby Black Forest Labs for its image-generation capabilities.
The model was trained on a mix of web data (with a knowledge cutoff of Q3 2023) andX user data.
The chatbot first rolled out in November 2023 (and, surely coincidentally, less than a year afterMusk signed an open letterdemanding the industry take a six-month moratorium toward further AI development).
If you’re wondering where the bizarre name came from, “Grok” was coined in the Robert Heinlein novelStranger in a Strange Land. The original meaning was to “understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with.”
Where did Grok come from?
Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI along with Sam Altman and other investors in 2015. However, just three years later, Musk quit the startup,claiming he“didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”
Altman and company went on to launch ChatGPT in November 2022, kicking off the AI revolution, and giving Muska wicked case of FOMO.
In April 2023, just a month after OpenAI released GPT-4, Musk went on the Tucker Carlson Showto announce he would be building“a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe” that wouldn’t bow to social niceties like ChatGPT, which, he argued, was being “trained to be politically correct.”
He called the AI “TruthGPT” because, as has proventimeandagain, branding is not Musk’s strong suit. TruthGPT was renamed Grok at its release.
Grok-1 was superseded by Grok-1.5 in March 2024, which offered improved performance and a context length of 128,000 tokens. That April, X incorporated Grok AI into its Explore section to summarize breaking news stories, a role previously performed by humans.
On its first day in use, the AI immediatelyhallucinated a headlineabout Iran bombarding Israel with “heavy missiles” that was then promoted by the company’s trending news tab. Grok-1.5 was then replaced by Grok-2, and Grok-2 mini, in August 2024.
Grok-3 then released in February 2025 and was subsequently replaced by Grok-4 in July 2025, which is now the current model.
What can Grok do?
Grok has been “modeled afterThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the companyexplained in its launch announcement, “so [it’s] intended to answer almost anything.” The open-source large language model reportedly boasts 314 billion parameters (about three-quarters the size ofLlama 3.1-405B) and has been trained on both data from the public web as well as the data from X users themselves.
Grok can answer user queries on subjects up to its June 24, 2025 knowledge cutoff. For events after that cutoff, Grok can perform web-searches as well as use “real-time access” to find information on X. That may be why Grok appears more susceptible to hallucinations and repeating misinformation than other AIs like ChatGPT.
Grok’s defining feature is its willingness to discuss subjects that are considered taboo by other chatbots and will readily discuss issues of politics, religion, and race with its users.
For example, when one X employee asked for a vulgar response to the question, “When is it appropriate to listen to Christmas music?” the AI responded with “whenever the hell you want” and added that those who disagree should “shove a candy cane up their ass and mind their own damn business.”
#GrokThotshttps://t.co/6LN44YtS4Npic.twitter.com/9SjMiYstPX
Similarly, Grok’s newly unveiled image generation capabilities, which debuted in August 2024 alongside Grok-2 and mini, have very few guardrails. Grok 2.0 claims to have guardrails when asked, but when releasing almost everything was fair game.
Users are able to generate images of celebrities, politicians, and other public figures as well as copyrighted assets like Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Nintendo’s Mario.
Grok 2 doesn’t give a darn about copyright lmaoThis will be fun while it lastspic.twitter.com/qiiScOGt8I
It should be noted that neither Disney nor Nintendo are renowned for their tolerance of IP theft.
As of right now, no legal action has been taken and you can still generate images of anything you want, including copyright protected characters, but how you use these images might pose issues.
¡No manches Grok 2.0! Te van a demandar.-Mario, mejor te invito una chela banquetera…pic.twitter.com/y0S1QYwr4Z
Overall, Grok can do pretty much anything that its physically capable of doing – unfortunately its lack of interface (such as actual working arms and legs) prevent it from completing physical chores however it can explain exactly what you need to do to complete these tasks.
It won’t be able to cook you a meal but if you ask it for step by step directions on how to do it yourself, it can provide you with these. You can use Grok to create poems, edit lines of code, write you emails and so much more.
One of the main features of Grok is its integration into X formerly known as Twitter, as it allows you to tag the AI beneath tweets and ask it to fact check, explain or clarify the contents of the tweet.
How much does Grok cost?
After releasing Grok-3 back in February, X premium memberssaw subscription prices increase significantly.
At the start of the month, the Premium+ tier cost $22 per month (or $299 yearly), but after Grok-3’s release, that price jumped to $40 per month (or $396 per year). This suggests prices may continue to rise as Grok becomes more intelligent.
What’s the latest version of Grok?
Grok 4 is the latest version of the AI, which was released back at the start of July 2025. When releasing this new update, X stated that Grok 4 is the most intelligent model in the world.
You have the ability for native tool use and real-time search integration, features which have already been available within ChatGPT for a while now.
X also states that Grok 4 has scaled up reinforcement learning. This has refined Grok’s reasoning abilities making it more understanding and allows it to provide more human like responses.
Which devices can use Grok?
In January 2025, Grok made the leap from being a feature within the X chat platform to being an app of its ownwith the release of Grok for iOS. Available on both iOS and iPadOS devices, the app offers free access to Grok-2, which was released inAugust 2024.
Users can leverage the AI’s text and image generation capabilities through the app, though the existing limitations for free tier users (10 queries every two hours) remain in place. This means you can use Grok on iOS, Andriod and web within X.
On top of this, Grok has been implemented into Tesla vehicles as of June 12, 2025, allowing you to talk to the AI hands free. you’re able to choose Grok’s voice and personality to enhance your convince on the go.
What’s next for Grok?
A new Grok is seemingly released every 6 months which suggests that Grok 5 may be coming around the end of this year or early next year.
Other than this, we don’t have very much information on what is coming next for Grok and with so many new features implemented recently, it makes sense that development may be winding down for a short while.
