Musk says xAI will launch its first AI model to 'select group'

The Grok system will have a 'massive advantage' over the competition, with 'a little humour and sarcasm'

X owner Elon Musk said xAI’s Grok system will be made available to all X Premium+ subscribers once it is out of its beta phase. EPA

X owner Elon Musk said his newly formed artificial intelligence company xAI is set to release its first AI model to a “select group” on Saturday, promising a “massive advantage” over its competition.

The Grok system of xAI would then be made available to premium subscribers of X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter, Mr Musk said in a series of tweets late on Friday.

“Grok has real-time access to information via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models … as soon as it’s out of early beta, xAI’s Grok system will be available to all X Premium+ subscribers,” he said.

X's Premium+ tier, which starts at $16 per month, or $168 a year, comes with revenue sharing, gives users the “largest reply boost”, grants access to other creator tools and removes advertising from the For You and Following feeds.

Grok is also “designed to have a little humour in its responses … it’s also based & loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way”, Mr Musk said.

Mr Musk, reputedly the world's wealthiest person, who is also the chief executive of electric vehicle major Tesla Motors, did not give a timeline on when Grok will be out from its beta version.

Mr Musk announced the forming of xAI in July, with a mission statement “to understand reality” and “the true nature of the universe”.

The company has a stacked team, whose members have worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto, and have “collectively contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field” of AI, its website said.

It is also one of several companies that have been formed following the emergence of generative AI, the technology brought to the fore by ChatGPT, created by Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

Mr Musk, who is leading the new company that is a separate entity from his X Corp, waded into the AI field in 2015 when he co-founded OpenAI.

However, he left the company in 2018, citing a potential conflict of interest with Tesla, and since then has become a critic of OpenAI and has been outspoken on the dangers of AI.

Developers, however, aim to tap into the potential of the emerging technology, which is poised to reshape interactions in business and society.

In the several months that generative AI has been in the mainstream, it has impressed users and is providing a boost to the lagging semiconductor industry, while also giving rise to concerns and controversies, and being deemed 2023's most overhyped emerging technology.

Its contribution to global gross domestic product is also now expected to be higher within the next 10 years, at between 10 per cent to 15 per cent, as its adoption is expected to grow further, a recent report from Goldman Sachs showed.

The growing AI sector is also expected to be regulated by governments soon and would help “create better wages and interesting jobs”, Microsoft chairman and chief executive Satya Nadella told The National in Abu Dhabi this week.