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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 of ChatGPT, Gemini and Midjourney, by offering an AI chatbot with more of a personality than the alternatives on offer.

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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.

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If you’re wondering where the bizarre name came from, “Grok” was coined in the Robert Heinlein novel Stranger 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 Musk a wicked case of FOMO.

In April 2023, just a month after OpenAI released GPT-4, Musk went on the Tucker Carlson Show to 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 proven time and again, 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Grok-1 was superseded by Grok-1.5 in March 2024, which offered improved performance and a context length of 128,000 tokens.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.

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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 after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the company explained 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 of Llama 3.1-405B) and has been trained on both data from the public web as well as the data from X users themselves.

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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.”

#GrokThots https://t.co/6LN44YtS4N pic.twitter.com/9SjMiYstPX— Christopher Stanley (@cstanley) November 5, 2023

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.

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Grok 2 doesn’t give a darn about copyright lmaoThis will be fun while it lasts pic.twitter.com/qiiScOGt8I— Brendon (@Bmaynze) August 14, 2024

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— Adan Avelar Islas (@adanvecindad) August 15, 2024

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.

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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?

Musk has marked Grok as an ultra-premium feature which was originally made available exclusively to folks paying $16/month for the X Premium+ subscription. That exclusivity waned in March 2024 when X expanded its availability to its $8/month X Premium subscribers. Grok is not currently available to free-tier X users.

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After releasing Grok-3 back in February, X premium members saw 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.

You can also subscribe to SuperGrok Heavy tier with access to Grok 4 Heavy – the most powerful version of Grok 4, for a staggering $300 per month.

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.

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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 own with the release of Grok for iOS. Available on both iOS and iPadOS devices, the app offers free access to Grok-2, which was released in August 2024.

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On top of this, Grok has been implemented into Tesla vehicles as of July 12 2025, allowing you to talk to the AI hands free. You can 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.

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