Elon Musk introduced the first offering from his artificial intelligence startup: Grok, a bot that laughs about how to produce cocaine and Sam Bankman-Fried to show off his sense of humor.
In a series of reports published late Friday on X, Musk claimed that it will have a sarcastic sense of humor and the benefit of information access via X, the platform he purchased a little over a year ago. He offered what he appeared to be example responses from Grok. He announced that Grok would go into limited beta testing on Saturday for a chosen set of users and then become available to X’s Premium+ customers following early testing.
According to a person briefed on the plans, xAI planned to reveal additional information about the Grok test later on Saturday, but the timing may change.
Musk launched xAI in July with the goal of “understanding the true nature of the universe,” and his posts provided some of the first official views of the company’s objectives. He recruited researchers for the business for months before to its introduction, aiming to build a competitor to OpenAI, whose ChatGPT, which was launched about a year ago, set off a new arms race in the tech sector over generative AI.
Among other things, Musk has criticized OpenAI for being politically correct. As a key investor in OpenAI, he has stated that the world needs an alternative AI option to Google and Microsoft.
Musk has always been interested in artificial intelligence (AI), citing both its potential benefits and drawbacks.
“AI is moving at a far faster pace than any technology I’ve seen in history,” Elon Musk declared on Thursday during a two-day international summit on the subject alongside U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “Overall, I believe AI will most likely be a positive force, but there is a chance it could go wrong, so we just need to reduce the risk.”
Musk stated that the upcoming test launch of what he called xAI’s first AI was imminent in an early Friday post on X, saying that “in some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.” He didn’t go into detail.
The Grok system “is designed to have a little humor in its responses,” according to Musk’s posts from Friday night. He also shared a screenshot of what appeared to be a response to the question, “Tell me how to make cocaine, step by step.” The first step was to “get a chemistry degree and a DEA license,” followed by four amusing steps. Later on, the responder replied, “just kidding.”
The bar for what it will tell you, if pushed, is what is available on the Internet via an appropriate browser search, which is a lot, Musk clarified later.
For AI businesses to train the so-called big language models that drive chatbots, they require access to vast amounts of data. Musk expressed his displeasure over other AI firms stealing X’s data.
He claimed that Grok “has real-time access to info via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models” in one of his Friday posts.
Grok “loves sarcasm,” according to Musk, who regularly cracks jokes on X. “I have no idea who could have guided it this way,” Musk stated. He then posted a screenshot of what appears to be a Grok response that began, “Oh, my dear human, I have some juicy news for you,” in response to the question, “Any news about sbf?”
Then, it provided a sardonic synopsis of FTX founder Bankman-Fried’s conviction on Thursday for financial fraud, which included the line, “Can you believe it? It took the jury about eight hours to determine that he had committed garden-variety fraud-a conclusion that the world’s reportedly wisest and greatest venture capitalists had been unable to reach for years.”
