The Grok chatbot, developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, is now open for free to all users of X (formerly Twitter). A strategic decision which comes in a context of strong competition in the conversational AI market.
A freemium offer with restrictions
Free access to Grok comes with several limitations. Non-premium users can ask 10 questions every two hours, analyze 3 images per day and generate up to 4 images daily. To benefit from more intensive use (up to 50 questions per day), you must subscribe to the X Premium (€8/month) or Premium+ (€14/month) subscriptions.
To access the service, you must have an X account created at least 7 days ago and associated with a telephone number. This new pricing policy brings Grok closer to its competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, who also offer free versions with restrictions.
An ambitious but perfectible AI
Grok stands out for its more casual and conversational tone than its competitors. A fun mode is even available to encourage the AI to hallucinate and adopt a familiar tone. It can assist users in their research, IT development or even writing emails. However, as xAI points out, it is advisable to check your answers because the AI remains prone to errors. In particular, it caused controversy by disseminating false electoral information and generating controversial images.
This opening comes as xAI has just raised an additional $6 billion, bringing its total funding to $12 billion. The company, valued at $50 billion, benefits from unique assets such as access to data from X and Tesla, as well as a supercomputer recently built in Memphis. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, also recognized that xAI could become “a very serious competitor”.
Although the exact number of Grok users is not public, it is believed to be in the millions according to unofficial estimates. That’s still a far cry from ChatGPT’s 300 million weekly users or the 600 million monthly users Meta claims for its assistant. This new freemium strategy could allow Grok to significantly expand its user base.
