To compete with OpenAI, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, Elon Musk's xAI unveiled an AI engine and chatbot.
“Grok” is an AI based on Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that can answer practically any query and suggest ones.
The word comes from Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land.
It's complicated, but the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “to understand intuitively or by empathy”, “to empathise or communicate sympathetically”, or “experience enjoyment”.
xAI called Grok's ability to use real-time data from Musk's X, formerly Twitter, a “unique and fundamental” advantage.
Since the AI answers questions with humor and rebelliousness, xAI urged those who “hate humour” to avoid it.
The business said Grok would answer “spicy” inquiries other models could refuse.
Musk posted an answer to one such inquiry on Twitter/X with the comment “Oh, this is gonna be fun”.
How Grok compares to AI models
The Grok-1 LLM, created over four months, powers Grok.
After its founding, xAI trained Grok-0, a 33 billion-parameter LLM prototype.
xAI claims its early model approaches LLaMA 2 (70B) capabilities on typical LM benchmarks but utilizes half its training resources.
In the last two months, we have made significant improvements in reasoning and coding leading up to Grok-1, a more powerful language model, achieving 63.2% on the HumanEval coding task and 73% on multidisciplinary multiple choice questions.
Grok-1 was evaluated by xAI using typical machine learning criteria to assess math and reasoning skills.
Grok-1 outperformed ChatGPT-3.5 and Inflection-1 on these benchmarks, according to xAI.
Only models trained with a substantially larger quantity of training data and compute resources like GPT-4 outperform it.”
“This shows xAI's rapid progress in training LLMs efficiently.”
The table below compares Grok-1 benchmarks to other prominent LLMs.
In the Grok-1 model card, xAI summarized its LLM technical features.
Grok had only two months of training, thus the business stressed that it was still in beta.
Only a few US users can join up for the Grok prototype's first public beta.
Grok will get new features from xAI in the coming months.
Musk previously stated that all X Premium+ subscribers will have access to the AI model once it is out of beta.
The new package costs $16 per month in the US or R289.98 in South Africa.
