xAI’s Grok Now Available for US Premium+ Users

Elon Musk announced via X (formerly Twitter) that Grok, xAI’s chatbot, is now available for all US Premium+ subscribers.

xAI claims Grok was built in four months and says its strength lies in accessing data from the X platform in real time to train the model rather than only using a static data set.

Initially released early November to a limited number of subscribers for beta testing, this release is the next step in a more global roll out. In his announcement, Musk advised that the rollout to all English language users beyond the US with Premium+ subscriptions would happen in “about a week or so.”

Given that Japanese-speaking users make up the second largest user base, Japanese will be the next priority language. The ultimate goal is to have all languages available by early 2024.

While Grok displayed “strong results” on industry benchmarks and surpassed models like ChatGPT-3.5 and Inflection-1, xAI still warns that this model can “generate false or contradictory information.”

In recent weeks, advertisers have been leaving the X platform following Musk supporting extremist views in his posts. This exodus has decreased significantly ad revenue projections for the year, with some estimates reaching $75 million of lost income. In an effort to diversify revenue sources, X has created a number of specialized services to drive subscription revenues, including Grok.

X introduced its new tiers of paid services in early October. There are three tiers: Basic, Premium, and Premium+ with increasing levels of features and capabilities available. Prices range from $3/month for a basic account to $16/month of a Premium+ account. Users on the top tier can enjoy ad-free For You and Following timelines, access to Media Studio, and ID verification.

While adding Grok to the top tier only, X is attempting to create value differentiation between the levels, but it may struggle to convince users to subscribe when other powerful chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, are available for free.