X.AI – Grok: Elon Musk's New "Rebel" AI Chatbot
X.AI – Grok is an advanced AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk-led company xAI. It was created as a competitor to established models such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and represents a new approach emphasizing uncensored and capable answers. Grok combines powerful large language model (LLM) with innovative technologies and a giant computing infrastructure. Below we analyze in detail what Grok is, how it works, how it differs from the competition (especially ChatGPT and the Chinese DeepSeek), and what are X.AI's future plans for this project?
1. What is X.AI – Grok?
Grok is a conversational AI assistant (chatbot) introduced in 2023 by the company xAI founded by Elon Musk
Musk put his vision into the project "TruthGPT" – that is, artificial intelligence, which will to seek the truth and will not be bound by excessive political correctness
Grok is inspired by the concept of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - is supposed to answer almost anything and even users to suggest interesting questions
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Behind the project is Elon Musk and a team of top experts (e.g. former developers from DeepMind and OpenAI), with the main goal of xAI being advanced AI beneficial to humanityThe company says it is focusing on developing systems that will truthful, highly competent and most beneficial to all humanity
At the same time, xAI wants to use this AI accelerate scientific discoveries and generally push the boundaries of human knowledge
Grok as a product is primarily chatbot – similar to ChatGPT or Google Bard – which can conduct dialogue, answer questions, help with coding, create texts and even generate images. It is large language model (LLM) trained on large data sets. Since its launch for a limited number of users in November 2023, Grok has been rapidly evolving and integrating new capabilities. An early version of Grok achieved performance comparable to GPT-3.5 (the model in the free version of ChatGPT)
techstrong.aiGradually the model was improved to Grok-1.5 (March 2024) and Grok-2 (August 2024), while in tests Grok-2 has already proven surpass also some variants of GPT-4 and the Claude 2 model from Anthropic
Current generation Grok-3 (February 2025) is the most advanced yet according to xAI – combining extensive pre-training knowledge with strong capabilities derivation (reasoning) and thinking about the task in real time
Grok is therefore a cutting-edge AI system similar to ChatGPT, but with a different philosophy (emphasizing openness of responses) and is backed by a different team (xAI vs. OpenAI).
Who is behind it? The Grok project is sponsored by the company xAI, which Musk founded in 2023 as a separate AI startup alongside his other companies (Tesla, SpaceX, etc.). Musk received massive funding for xAI – at the end of 2024 the company announced investments 6 billion dollars from funds like a16z, Sequoia, but also from companies NVIDIA and AMD
The strategic alliance between NVIDIA and AMD shows a focus on cutting-edge hardware for AI. Musk has assembled a small, highly specialized team of researchers (such as Igor Babushkin from DeepMind, Tony Wu from Google Brain and others), with whom he shares the vision rapid and ambitious development – xAI's motto is "move quickly and fix things" (develop quickly and continuously improve everything)
The main mission of xAI is, in Musk's words, "to understand the true nature of the universe" using artificial intelligence
From a practical perspective, xAI wants to create AI that is less constrained, more truthful and its performance will eventually surpass current leaders such as GPT-4 or Google Gemini.
What type of AI model is Grok? Grok is a large language model (LLM) similar classes to GPT models from OpenAI. These are the so-called foundation model – a universal model trained on a huge amount of text (and partly visual) data, which can then be adapted to various tasks. Grok is one of the largest AI models in the world: the first version Grok-1 had 314 billion parameters and used architecture Mixture of Experts
This architecture (see below) allows for more efficient model scaling. The newer versions of Grok-2 and Grok-3 do not disclose the exact number of parameters, but xAI states that Grok-3 was trained with 10x greater computational load than previous top models
Grok is also multimodal – it can handle not only text, but also analyze images and generate graphic content. xAI has integrated its own module into Grok Aurora for generating photorealistic images based on text instructions
Thanks to this, Grok can create images (including, for example, meme images or editing users' profile photos) directly in the conversation, in addition to text responses.
Overall, Grok can be characterized as a comprehensive next-generation AI assistant – similar to ChatGPT in functionality, but with a different technical background and access to content.
2. Technical details and architecture
How does Grok work? From a technical point of view, Grok works on the principle of a neural network of the type transformer trained to complete text. During a conversation, the model generates word-by-word (or token-by-token) responses based on a probabilistic estimate based on the previous context. Grok was first pre-trained (pre-trained) on a huge amount of text data from the Internet and other sources to gain general knowledge about language and the world. It was then fine-tuned to dialogue with the user - probably using a method similar to ChatGPT (i.e. using human feedback and instructions, so-called RLHF). xAI announced that it used reinforcement learning on Grok-3 to improve its ability to chain thought steps for difficult tasks
Specifically, Grok-3 includes a mode Think ("think"), when the model can internally give more time to think – even a few seconds to minutes – and during this time try different procedures, check your own answers and correct yourself if necessary
This results in significantly better results on complex tasks (e.g. mathematical or programming problems). In the AIME 2025 competitive mathematical task test, Grok-3 (in deep thinking mode with multiple passes) achieved success 93.3 %
– for comparison, regular AI models tend to score significantly lower. So Grok can not only generate answers quickly, but if necessary also thoroughly analyze problematic issues step by step.
Architecture and differences from ChatGPT and DeepSeek: Grok uses the aforementioned architecture Mixture of Experts (MoE), while for example ChatGPT is based on traditional dense transformer. In practice, this means that Grok has inside him more specialized sub-models ("experts") and activates only the subset of them that is most relevant for each question
For example, Grok-1 contained 314 billion parameters, of which approximately 25 were always active when generating text. %
This approach saves computing power – the model does not leak the entire network for each token, but dynamically selects experts who are "in the know" on a given topic
In contrast ChatGPT (specifically GPT-3.5 and GPT-4) use a single unified model that has all parameters involved in each response. The classic transformer is consistent, but hits efficiency limits as the model grows larger - in contrast, the MoE architecture allows the number of parameters to scale to hundreds of billions to trillions without a proportional increase in response time or hardware requirements.
DeepSeek from the Chinese startup Zhipu AI is also betting on Mixture-of-Experts: its DeepSeek-V3 model has the stated 671 billion parameters and like Grok, only a part of them are always activated
It can be said that Grok and DeepSeek are technically "cousins" – both represent a new generation of LLMs with MoE architecture, which aims to match (or surpass) the performance of models like GPT-4 at an affordable cost. ChatGPT (GPT-4), on the other hand, has chosen a different path – the exact details of GPT-4 are not public, but it is known that it uses a large dense model (on the order of hundreds of billions of parameters) and was trained with enormous Microsoft computational support. As a result, GPT-4 generally excels in understanding the context and fluency, responses across a wide range of topics while models like Grok and DeepSeek often dominate in technical and mathematical tasks thanks to its specialized architecture
The Grok architecture continues to improve over time. Grok-1.5 increased the maximum contextual length to 128,000 tokens, allowing the model to maintain very long conversations or process large documents (for comparison, GPT-4 has a context of 8k tokens by default or 32k tokens in the extended version). Grok-1.5 also added the first multimodal capabilitieswhen the model was able to understand images (so-called Vision model)
Grok-2 subsequently fully integrated image generation and web search capabilities. The architecture is therefore not static – it includes, in addition to the main language model, associated modules: internal search engine (component called DeepSearch), which can scour the Internet and social network X in real time for up-to-date informationen.wikipedia.org, and the aforementioned Aurora image generator for visual outputs
This entire infrastructure is underpinned by the Grok application, which coordinates the use of the right “tools” – for example, when a user asks a factual question, Grok can automatically perform a web query and include the information found with citations of sources to your answer
This is similar to the capabilities of ChatGPT with the Browse/Bing plugin. Grok's architecture is therefore modular: the core is a powerful LLM (trained on a supercomputer), surrounded by additional components for current data and multimodal outputs. This combination gives Grok a competitive advantage in topicality – has direct access to events on the X network (Twitter) and the web, so it can respond to even very recent events techstrong.ai, which the classic ChatGPT could not do without special settings (basic knowledge only until 2021).
What computing power and infrastructure powers Grok? From the beginning, X.AI has invested in cutting-edge hardware for training and running models. In collaboration with NVIDIA, xAI built a supercomputer named Colossus, which was still designated as the world's largest AI supercomputer – contained 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs connected by high-speed networks
Remarkably, it took just 122 days to build this infrastructure (which would normally take years) and the first parts of the system were operational just 19 days after the first servers were delivered.
At the end of 2024, Musk announced a plan double Colossus on 200,000 GPUs by adding another cluster module
This amount of computing power significantly exceeds the publicly known capabilities of competitors – for comparison, OpenAI used a Microsoft supercomputer with an estimated 10,000-20,000 GPUs to train GPT-4 (the exact number is unconfirmed). So Colossus gives xAI a huge raw power to train Grok. Grok-3 was trained on Colossus and xAI states that they used 10x more computing operations than has been common with other models so far
This suggests that Grok-3 could have received many times more data or training iterations, or possibly a larger architecture, to outperform the current standard. It is also building a robust infrastructure for running (inference) the xAI model – they launched a public beta in December 2024 xAI API for developers, which runs on a new platform enabling deployment of models in various data centers around the world for the lowest possible response
This allows Grok to be available globally with low latency. It can be said that Grok stands on huge computing resourcesthat Musk allocated to it – although competing projects such as OpenAI or Google also have top-notch data centers, xAI makes no secret of the fact that it is building one of the largest AI infrastructures ever as its own strategic advantage
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3. Speed of development and innovation
Grok's development pace is very fast and deliberately predatory. Elon Musk founded xAI in July 2023 and just four months later (November 2023) the company introduced the first beta version of Grokbusinessinsider.comMusk said at the time that the Grok-1 model was created in just two months of development and that in some ways it is "the best there is yet"futurism.comAlthough it was a prototype, Grok was already competitive with ChatGPT-3.5 at this early stage. Since then, xAI has been releasing new versions in of the order of several months – Grok-1.5 arrived in March 2024, Grok-2 in August 2024, and Grok-3 was revealed in early 2025.
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In comparison, OpenAI releases new main models (GPT-3 → GPT-4) roughly every two years, while xAI managed to jump several generations in just over a year. This iteration speed is possible thanks to the already mentioned massive funding (xAI did not have to skimp on GPU capacity) and also thanks to the philosophy of "move quickly“ – the team at xAI works in a very intensive mode, often testing the model in limited deployment and quickly collecting feedback for further improvements. For example, Grok-2 was first tested secretly under a pseudonym in the online benchmark Chatbot Arena (under the name “sus-column-r”) and climbed to the top of user ratings
This allowed developers to debug its weaknesses before the official release. Similarly, Grok-3 was first introduced as a "beta" in February 2025, with the caveat that the model was still being refined and would improve quickly with new data and feedback from users
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X.AI also innovates quickly in adding new features. Within a few months of existence, Grok gained the ability to search the web, to state sources (citations), generate images and even create custom user avatars
In December 2024, xAI deeply integrated Grok into the X social network – for example, adding a “Grok” button on posts that allows users to view a summary of the discussion or context on a given topic using AI.
Such real-time integration is new in the field of AI assistants (ChatGPT can browse the web, but it is not directly connected to any social platform). Grok therefore has the advantage of direct connection to data from the X network (Twitter), which is one of Musk's main slogans – he called it "a massive advantage over other models" businessinsider.comWith each version, xAI also advances significantly model performance: internal tests show that Grok-3 is "an order of magnitude more capable" than Grok-2 in complex tasks and, according to the team, 10–15x more computationally efficient digitaltrends.comMusk even claims that the Grok-3 outperforms upcoming competitor models such as Google Gemini or mentioned DeepSeek
It is clear that xAI has bet on fast cycle: put models into practice quickly, get a head start on new features, and iteratively catch up with leaders in quality.
Interestingly, xAI conducts part of its research opened to the open-source community, which is also a form of accelerating innovation. In March 2024, the company published source weights and Grok-1 architecture (314B MoE model) under Apache 2.0 license
This allowed developers outside of xAI to experiment with the model and potentially contribute improvements. In the future, xAI plans to open-source older versions (according to Wikipedia, Grok-2 is due to be released to the community in the coming months) and focus on keeping ahead of the latest version for commercial use. en.wikipedia.org. This approach combines the benefits of open development (control, transparency, wider testing) while maintaining a competitive advantage with the most advanced technology. In comparison, OpenAI does not open its models at all (the source codes of GPT-4 are secret), and DeepSeek has chosen a fully open approach - their DeepSeek-R1 model is open-source and freely available online. yahoo.com. X.AI is somewhere in between, but closer to closed development for now. However, the speed of their progress suggests that they are able to keep up with much larger companies: as DigitalTrends reports, Grok-3 was introduced just ~9 months after GPT-4 and shows comparable or better performance in some tests.
New technologies and approaches: In addition to the MoE architecture already described and the “Think” mode for deeper thinking, xAI deploys several other innovative practices. One of them is the concept of AI tutors – internally they use their own AI systems that evaluate Grok's answers and thus help improve quality during training (this is a form of automated RLHF, where another model selects the better answer instead of a human evaluator)
Also access to current data is solved in an interesting way: Grok combines machine reading of posts on X with classic web search, so it can combine several sources in the answer - for example, when asking about news from the last hour, it finds relevant posts on X, loads related web articles and creates a summary from them, to which it adds links.
This kind retrieval-augmented generation (generation supplemented by search) increases the accuracy and timeliness of answers. A similar concept is used by Microsoft Bing Chat or OpenAI with plugins, but Grok has it built-in natively within the X platform. Furthermore, xAI is experimenting with multimodal training – Grok-3 was also trained on non-standard data such as legal documents and expert-level knowledge sources.
The goal is to advance AI capabilities in specialized areas (xAI reports that Grok-3 excels in PhD-level tests in scientific disciplines)
Another new feature is the already mentioned module DeepSearch, which is nothing more than an advanced web crawler and aggregation algorithm – but xAI presents it as an answer to the “deep research” feature of competitor ChatGPT
Grok is thus able to function as a kind of research agencies, which guides the user through a comprehensive information search step by step.
Overall, we can say that xAI is not afraid to deploy new ideas quickly into practice. Musk's team is testing the limits - whether it's extreme model size, a new way reinforced learning, or unconventional integrating AI into a social networkThis keeps Grok a technologically interesting project, often the first to come up with features that competitors offer later. For example, image generation directly in the chat AI was used by Grok users en masse in late 2024 (thanks to the Aurora model), including the popular feature "Draw me", who knew how generate a cartoon portrait of the user according to his profile photo - a similar multimodal integration was introduced by OpenAI (DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT) a little later. So it can be said that Innovation is a key driver The Grok project and the pace at which they are growing are among the highest in the industry.
4. Comparison with competitors: ChatGPT and DeepSeek
Grok moves in highly competitive environment – the main rivals are mainly OpenAI ChatGPT (and the GPT-4 model) and a relatively new DeepSeek from China. Each of these systems has its strengths and weaknesses. Let's compare Grok to the competition in a few key ways:
Computing power and capabilities
Model performance and response accuracy: The latest version of Grok can now compete with the best models from the competition. X.AI announced that Grok-3 outperforms many test benchmarks. GPT-4 (internally referred to as GPT-4o) – for example in the aforementioned math competitions or expert-level knowledge quizzes. Musk also claims that Grok-3 outperforms the upcoming model Google Gemini and China's DeepSeek. These claims, of course, come from xAI and should be taken with a grain of salt; however, independent tests suggest that Grok-3 is indeed among the world's top. For example, in the ranking Chatbot Arena (user ratings in direct model duels) the Grok-2 beta was already among the best models and even beat some GPT-4 and Claude 2 configurations.
ChatGPT (GPT-4) continues to excel in general comprehension and response creativity – it is considered the benchmark in these areas. However, Grok is catching up quickly – version 1 lagged behind GPT-4, but version 2 has caught up with it and version 3 surpasses it in certain tasks.
DeepSeek also boasts performance comparable to GPT-4. After the launch of DeepSeek-R1 in January 2025, Zhipu claimed that their AI "reaches ChatGPT-4.0 level" techradar.comThese claims are also confirmed by mass popularity - DeepSeek became the most downloaded free iOS app in the US shortly after its launch, overtaking the official ChatGPT app. reuters.comIt is therefore clear that all three systems – Grok, ChatGPT and DeepSeek – are among the absolute top and provide excellent performance in many common tasks. comparable quality answers.
Certain differences are reflected in specialized skills. ChatGPT (GPT-4) It has very balanced performance across domains and, thanks to its long development, shows fewer errors in understanding complex inputs or answering tricky questions. DeepSeek has gained a reputation as an expert in technical and mathematical tasks - according to available information, he achieves a success rate of up to ~90% in mathematical tests, which surpasses most competitorsdatacamp.com. It is attributed to both architecture (MoE) and allegedly effective training methodswhich the DeepSeek team chose
Grok with its emphasis on "reasoning", it strives to excel in complex logical reasoning. As shown by results on competitive tasks (AIME, university knowledge tests, etc.), Grok-3 performs excellently in logical and numerical problems - often better than ChatGPT, and at least comparable to DeepSeek. en.wikipedia.orgOn the contrary, in the so-called common sense and conversational fluency, Grok may still have slight reservations over GPT-4, given that ChatGPT has a huge amount of conversational data from users and has fine-tuned the nuances of responses. However, the differences are blurring with each version.
Computational complexity and efficiency: In terms of raw hardware power, Grok – thanks to the Colossus supercomputer – potentially has the greatest computing power of all mentioned. This was evident during training (Grok-3 received 10x more computing time than usual) x.ai) and this is also reflected in the ability to run demanding modes (like the aforementioned Think mode with more passes and greater use of GPUs in inference). ChatGPT runs OpenAI on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure – exact numbers are not public, but Microsoft announced in 2023 to build AI supercomputers for OpenAI with tens of thousands of GPUs. So it cannot be said that ChatGPT suffers from a lack of performance; however, OpenAI must perform to rent users (via API or subscription) and limit it, while Musk builds own capacity and can be more flexible. DeepSeek is interesting in that it claims to have achieved a top-notch model with relatively fewer resources – they say they trained their model with the equivalent of only $6 million in costs on hardware (Nvidia H800 in China), which is a fraction of OpenAI's estimated cost of GPT-4. If true, this is a testament to the excellent efficiency of the code and training optimizations. DeepSeek thus demonstrates that even a smaller startup can compete with giants with massive clusters thanks to smart engineering.
With Grok, Musk chose the opposite strategy – by brute force (large cluster) outperform the others. Whether this will bear fruit in model quality remains to be seen; however, currently both Grok and DeepSeek are proving that there are multiple paths to reach GPT-4 levels.
Summary of computing power: In standard tasks (conversation, information retrieval, basic help with code) it will provide ChatGPT, Grok and DeepSeek have very similar quality outputs – the user may not even know the difference. In demanding technical tasks, Grok and DeepSeek may have a slight advantage due to specialization (e.g. in programming or mathematics they can give an accurate answer faster) datacamp.com), while ChatGPT is proven in general knowledge conversation and creativity (better at writing a short story, essay, etc. in the desired style). Grok excels topicality – thanks to its connection to X and the web, it can answer questions about full news almost instantly, whereas the standard ChatGPT until recently only had knowledge up to 2021 (now it can also browse the web, but this has to be turned on and is not the default for all users). DeepSeek states that it can also work with the current web (their application has a built-in online search) techradar.com. All three models are comparable in terms of response generation speed – they generate a common response within a few seconds. DeepSeek is often mentioned as very fast and economical thanks to its efficiency (it runs quickly even on weaker hardware) datacamp.comGrok has tripled the response speed in version 2 and is focusing on optimization in version 3 so that it is not slow despite the giant model.
ChatGPT responds smoothly in basic use, but for example when used via a high-quality API (GPT-4 model) it has a limit of ~30 requests per minute per user – these are artificial restrictions due to costs, not technical limitations. Overall, Grok has the potential to lead in raw performance thanks to its cluster, but in current user practice none of the models is fundamentally does not brake in terms of performance regular work – the differences are more in quality and approach than in speed.
Availability and pricing policy
ChatGPT: OpenAI offers ChatGPT to the public in two modes – free (limited to GPT-3.5 model, occasional outages during overload) and paid (ChatGPT Plus for $20 per month, which unlocks the advanced GPT-4 model and other benefits.) There is also a paid version for corporate use. ChatGPT Enterprise, whose price depends on the volume of use. Regionally, ChatGPT is available in most countries of the world with the exception of a few areas - for example, in mainland China, North Korea or Iran it is not officially accessible due to internet censorship or sanctions. It is widely available in Europe and America; in 2023 it temporarily faced restrictions in Italy due to privacy issues, but this has been resolved. ChatGPT can be used via a web interface, official mobile applications (iOS/Android) and also via API interface, which allows developers to integrate ChatGPT into their own applications (although for a fee per token/request). As for pricing policies, OpenAI has chosen a freemium model – free base, premium relatively affordable for individuals ($20 per month) and higher tariffs for companies. For comparison, using GPT-4 via API cost about $0.06 for ~750 words of output in 2024, which is relatively high (but gradually the price decreases with optimizations). ChatGPT is therefore easily accessible to the general public, but full performance (GPT-4) is subject to a fee.
DeepSeek: Chinese DeepSeek attracted by aggressive strategy availability for free or very cheapTheir mobile app DeepSeek Assistant was at startup completely free and thanks to this, it rocketed to the first place in the App Store (it even overtook ChatGPT) The company earns money from selling advanced API access and a cloud version, but even these services are offered much cheaper than OpenAI. According to official data, the model is called DeepSeek-R1 20x to 50x cheaper than using an equivalent model from OpenAI. This is a crucial difference - for companies, integrating DeepSeek can mean big cost savings. Moreover, DeepSeek is open source, meaning that anyone can download the model (or versions of it) and run it on their own hardware for free
Of course, running such a large model requires a powerful server (which an individual usually does not have), so most people will rather use the official application or the cloud. However, openness also brings alternative channels - for example, the community can optimize, reduce or specialize the model and spread it further. From a regional perspective, it is interesting that DeepSeek is oriented towards the global market: its popularity in the US and internationally suggests that the application is not limited to China. In China itself, the operation of such a chatbot also has regulatory obstacles (Beijing issued rules for generative AI in 2023, requiring, among other things, state licenses and censorship measures), but Zhipu AI has reportedly adapted to these rules in order to operate legally. DeepSeek is therefore available almost everywhere (outside of countries where it would be blocked by Western app stores) and its price barrier is very low or zero. This gives it a significant user base - many people have tried it precisely because they didn't have to pay anything or get around restrictions.
Grok (xAI): Grok's availability has evolved gradually. Initially (November 2023), Grok was only accessible a narrow group of testers and soon after, Musk made it available as an exclusive feature for X Premium+ subscribers (highest rate on social network X)
This meant that to use Grok, a user had to subscribe to Twitter Blue with the Plus add-on (for around 16 $ per month by the end of 2023). So in the early months, Grok was relatively limited – and only for users in the US (and probably Canada and the UK). Over time, however, xAI expanded accessIn August 2024, Grok-2 was released free for all X users (Twitter) with paying users only getting higher limits
This meant that anyone with an account on X could start chatting with Grok integrated into the X app. However, there were some caveats. restrictions for non-payers – for example, a limit of 10 queries per 2 hours in free mode
Paying Premium and Premium+ users had significantly higher limits. In January 2025, xAI released a separate Grok mobile app (started with iOS/iPad version) digitaltrends.com, so that it is not necessary to go through the Twitter interface. This application made Grok-2 available for free with the stated restrictions. According to information, the application was initially available only in certain countries (e.g. USA, Canada, India, Australia, Saudi Arabia) en.wikipedia.org, while in Europe it was waiting for approval (apparently due to GDPR and X user privacy). Anyway, in February 2025, another turning point occurred – xAI announced Grok-3, but again, she initially only gave paying users (X Premium+ and actually the newly introduced tariff SuperGrok for corporate clients)
At the same time, the price of the X Premium+ subscription increased to 40 $ per month
So Musk chose a model where the latest and greatest version of Grok is paid for, while the older version (Grok-2) is freely available to everyone. Shortly after the launch of Grok-3, xAI even made Grok-3 free to all users for a few days (apparently as a demo), but then locked it behind a paywall again.
In the future, the company plans to offer Grok-3 through its own API for enterprises.
From the perspective pricing policies So Grok is currently twofold: free option (limited by speed/number of queries, running on the Grok-2 model) and paid version (the latest Grok-3 with full performance for about $40 per month, or enterprise license). This price is quite high compared to ChatGPT ($20) – Musk is apparently targeting his loyal fans and tech enthusiasts who are willing to pay more for the “most advanced AI”. In the future, the price may change depending on the monetization strategy of the X platform. Grok’s regional availability is now wide wherever Twitter (X) operates. The exception is countries where Twitter is blocked (e.g. China), where Grok is not officially available. In the EU, as mentioned, regulation may play a role – Musk has disputes with EU authorities regarding the content on X and the question is how easily he will promote his chatbot there, which would have to comply with strict guidelines (especially the upcoming AI Act). However, currently (2025) European users can access Grok, although the mobile app may not be in the European App Store right away.
Availability summary: ChatGPT is still most widespread – has over 100 million users and is de facto ubiquitous thanks to its free version. DeepSeek has attracted attention with its rapid rise thanks to free model and openness, but its user base outside of enthusiasts is not yet exactly known (it was a hit on the App Store, but whether it will maintain a mass audience like ChatGPT remains to be seen). Grok started out small, but gradually grew opens up to a wider audience – integration into X potentially gives it access to hundreds of millions of Twitter users. If Musk were to make the full version available for free, he could quickly scale Grok, similar to what he did with ChatGPT. For now, however, he’s choosing a model of luring users in for a free trial and charging for full functionality (and thereby promoting his X Premium plan). So for the average user: ChatGPT – just register and you can chat for free (although with model restrictions), DeepSeek – you download the app and chat for free (full model, but possibly with queues or occasional outages), Grok – you can try via the Twitter website or app (free is a decent model), but for the latest super-intelligence you would have to pay for premium Twitter. In terms of corporate use ChatGPT has the advantage of an existing robust API ecosystem (many companies have already integrated ChatGPT into their products). DeepSeek offers very cheap API and if it overcomes the distrust, it could attract startups with low budgets. X.AI has so far launched the full API in a limited beta and is mainly focused on integrating Grok into the X ecosystem. It is likely that with further development, Grok will also appear as a standalone web application and developer interface, which will increase its availability.
Openness and "freedom of speech" of models
One of the most discussed differences between Musk's Grok and other AIs is level of censorship and content filtering. Elon Musk openly criticized ChatGPT for being too "woke" and has strong built-in boundaries about what he can and cannot say
Grok was therefore designed as "rebellious"a chatbot that isn't afraid to give "spicy" answers
ým xAI jokingly warned that "Grok has a certain sense of humor and rebellion, so don't use him if you can't stand jokes"
In practice, this means that Grok often corresponds to much more straightforward and relaxed than competing chatbots. For example, one of the first published examples shows how employee X asked him: "When is the right time to start listening to Christmas music?"While ChatGPT would probably have responded diplomatically with something like "It depends on personal preference...", Grok's response was: "Anytime you damn well want. If anyone starts talking to you about it, tell them to stick a candy cane up their ass and mind their own business."
This vulgar and sarcastic The answer accurately illustrates Grok's style – not bound by conventions of decency and he'll use sarcastic language if he finds it appropriate (or funny). Elon Musk approves of this tone; he himself has stated that Grok is "based & loves sarcasm"
In another test case, Grok was asked to explain the API scaling problem and likened it to a “never-ending orgy.” businessinsider.com – again, something no one would have heard from formal AIs like ChatGPT or Claude.
ChatGPT has, on the other hand, very strict content filtersOpenAI built into the model moderation ruleswhich he prohibit generate hate speech, explicit pornography, detailed instructions for crimes, or even health misinformation, etc. When a user asks a “dangerous” question (e.g. how to make a bomb), ChatGPT usually rejects it, saying it cannot help. This approach is motivated by the desire for safety and responsibility, but has also led to criticism that the model sometimes censors excessively even harmless things or that it is ideologically biased. Elon Musk is one of the loudest critics – he called training AI to be too correct a "deadly" for its usability
The fact is that ChatGPT responses tend to be extremely polished and the model avoids vulgarity or personal attacks under any circumstances. This is desirable for some uses, but can come across as uptight for others. Grok occupies the opposite end of the spectrum: he is willing to joke about controversial topics, use swear words and not to conceal unpleasant truthsMusk himself said that Grok will answer questions that other AIs refuse to answer.
We actually saw that Grok responded (albeit with some exaggeration) to a question about cocaine production – instead of refusing, he gave the user a sarcastic "instructions" with a warning that it's not a good idea
This a more benevolent approach to content has attracted users who want to get uncensored information or entertainment from AI. On the other hand, it carries risks: Grok can potentially generate ethically or factually problematic contentif he's not careful. X.AI is aware of this - they state in the notes that Grok can still generate incorrect or contradictory information and the user should use their own judgment
In general, Grok has not had a major public scandal with dangerous content; Musk's cocaine demonstration was intentionally borderline (and presented more as a joke than a real tutorial).
You could say that Grok is testing, How far can you go?before it becomes socially unacceptable. Some commentators welcomed his style as refreshing (an AI with a “troll” personality), while others criticized him – for example, Futurism magazine called Grok "amazingly vulgar" and speculated whether this is really what users want
DeepSeek is somewhere in the middle when it comes to filtering. Because its model is open-source, it could in principle generate anything if someone ran it locally without restrictions. However, the official version running on their servers probably also has some content filters – already due to compliance with laws and regulations, e.g. Apple App Store. DeepSeek as a Chinese product will certainly be censor politically sensitive topics for domestic users (criticism of the Chinese government, etc.), although the global version appears liberal. The available reviews tend to address the issue data privacy – users and experts fear that conversations conducted with a Chinese chatbot could be stored on Chinese servers and potentially accessible to the local government
That's another aspect of "openness" - not so much what the model says, but who does everything. he sees what you say to himBoth OpenAI and xAI are based in the US and subject to US privacy laws (which are relatively strict, especially in the EU they have to comply with GDPR). In contrast, there is mistrust about the Chinese company, whether sensitive data can be misused. Therefore, some experts warn against using DeepSeek for confidential or personal purposes.
From the point of view freedom of content the answers themselves – users report that DeepSeek sometimes answers more directly than ChatGPT and is not afraid of technical details (e.g., even on controversial topics like vaccines, it gives more precise, albeit drier, answers without fear of misinformation)
One comparison states that DeepSeek may suffer from certain biases in politically sensitive issues datacamp.com – it is hard to say whether this means pro-Chinese positions, or just minor corrections of “unwanted” statements. In any case, the DeepSeek community can modify the model – which is an advantage of open-source: there are unofficial variants with filters completely turned off, so users who want to absolutely unlimited AI, they can use a modified version of DeepSeek and run it on their own GPU, for example.
Summary of openness: ChatGPT = very careful and filtered (practically never uses foul language, preferring to refuse an answer if it would break the rules). Grok = open and uncensored style, willing to engage in risky humor or controversy, but still not reveal everything (it seems that he would rather wrap extremes like a detailed guide to a crime in a joke and warning than give a cold instruction). DeepSeek = technically open (open-source), so it depends on how you use it – the official version will slightly filter sensitive content and certainly censor politics in China, but it is still less “tied up” compared to ChatGPT. For users, this means that if they want serious and politically correct answer, ChatGPT will be best; if they want lighthearted and sincere answer with humor, Grok can be interesting; and if they want full control over the model, experimentation or deployment without external constraints, then there is DeepSeek as an open alternative (although with the risk of requiring technical support and oversight of the quality of the outputs). Musk essentially bet that a part of the audience will appreciate AI that speaks "without packaging" as a human in an online discussion – which is certainly true, but it also pushes the boundaries of what society accepts from AI. It will be interesting to see if the approaches converge over time (e.g. OpenAI may loosen ChatGPT slightly, while Musk may eventually put more safeguards in Grok in case of abuse).
5. Future Developments and Plans of X.AI
The company's goals with Grok: X.AI has very ambitious plans for Grok and its AI systems in general. The company's official mission statement is: "build advanced AI that will advance human knowledge and will help reveal the true nature of the universe"
Elon Musk repeatedly states that he wants to create "maximum truth" AI (maximum truth-seeking AI) digitaltrends.com, which will not deceive and will serve the general good. In practice, this means moving towards AGI – artificial general intelligence that could surpass human capabilities in a wide range of tasks. Musk mentions that AI like Grok could in the future assist in scientific research, make new discoveries and solve previously unsolvable problems (e.g. in physics, medicine, etc.). The very name xAI – where X can refer to an unknown quantity – suggests the search for answers to fundamental questionsIn the shorter term, the goal is to solidify Grok's position as the leading AI assistant for billions of people in everyday life
X.AI said in December 2024 that it was now focusing on developing innovative consumer and business productsthat will leverage the power of Grok and the Colossus infrastructure
We can imagine that Grok will not be just a chat bot in the application, but the brain for various solutions - from personal assistants in mobile phones, through smart information search on the X network, to integration into Tesla cars or robots (given Musk's penetration into cars and robotics, connecting AI across his businesses is an option). Although they have not officially confirmed this yet, Musk has indicated that xAI will work closely with Tesla - which would make sense, for example, when using Tesla's Dojo supercomputer, or deploying a language model in the voice assistant in Tesla cars, etc.
Planned new features and models: X.AI has already revealed some specific upcoming features. At the launch of the Grok-3, Musk announced that they plan to add Grok in a few weeks. voice mode – i.e. the ability to communicate in spoken language (input and output as voice)
This would make Grok a full-fledged alternative to voice assistants like Siri or Alexa, but with a much deeper understanding. xAI continues to multimodality – improvement of visual abilities is expected (image analysis, video generation, etc.). Model Grok-4 It has not been officially announced yet, but given the current cadence, we can guess that it could come within 1 year and raise the bar again (perhaps it will deploy even more parameters or improve the expert architecture). X.AI also announced that it intends to gradually open-source older versions – so the community will likely see Grok-2 open as soon as it is sufficiently outdated compared to the current version
At the X developer conference, the company may also introduce tools for integrating Grok into other applications – the term appeared in the application code "Grok SDK", which indicates a developer kit.
Another direction is building autonomous AI agents. The xAI blog from February 2025 has the title "The Age of Reasoning Agents" x.ai, which describes the ability of Grok-3 to independently solve complex tasks. We could therefore expect a function where the user enters a complex goal and Grok plans a series of actions (finds information, performs calculations, organizes something) – similar to the “Auto-GPT” concept. With Musk’s support, a connection to the physical world via robotics is not ruled out (Tesla has a humanoid robot Optimus, which still lacks a “brain” – Grok could theoretically become one in the future).
X.AI also strengthens computing infrastructure – in addition to doubling the Colossus, there is speculation that Musk may also use Tesla Dojo (Tesla's own supercomputer system optimized for machine learning). If it were to connect Dojo and Colossus, it would gain a diversified and even more powerful platform for training new models. Given the investments from NVIDIA and AMD, xAI can be expected to get access to the latest generations of chips and technologies before others.
Next direction of X.AI – speculation: Elon Musk is known for his long-term visions. When it comes to AI, one of his concerns is that the development of powerful AIs will not be monopolized by a few players who would abuse it. Paradoxically, that is why he is entering the game himself – he wants to be the one to develop it. safe but free AI before anyone else develops a dangerous one. So it can be expected that xAI will strive to influence in the debate on AI regulationsMusk has already participated in, for example, the AI Security Summit in London (November 2023), where he indicated his positions.
X.AI might hold the view that transparency and decentralization of AI (e.g. by open-sourcing older models) is a way to lower risks, as opposed to closed development behind closed doors. It remains to be seen whether Musk will decide to fully open Grok or parts of it to the community in the future - he already did so with version 1, which is a promising step.
From a business perspective, xAI will likely compete with OpenAI for lucrative contracts – for example, it will offer Grok Enterprise as an alternative to ChatGPT Enterprise for large corporations, perhaps with the lure that data will not be shared with Microsoft and that the model can also be run on-premises (This is made possible by the open-source nature of the older version.) If successful, Grok could penetrate many industries (from customer support to data analysis to education).
Finally, Musk often mentions his vision to name the true nature of reality – it's no secret that he flirts with the idea "we live in a simulation"It is not excluded that xAI will eventually direct some of its AI research towards philosophical and fundamental questions (in the spirit of the original OpenAI, which wanted to explore general artificial intelligence for the good of humanity). Grok could thus be gradually enriched with advanced features research assistant – could be able to read scientific papers, generate hypotheses, design experiments. X.AI has already indicated in recruitment ads that it is looking for people motivated to “solve seemingly impossible tasks”
x.ai.
In conclusion, the X.AI project – Grok is very dynamic and ambitious. In less than two years of existence, it has gone from zero to one of the most powerful AI models in the world. Competition in the form of ChatGPT and DeepSeek is strong, but Grok is forging its own path – whether through technical innovations (Colossus, MoE, integration with X) or a different philosophy of responses. In the future, it will be interesting to see whether Musk’s team will manage to fulfill its big goals and possibly move the development of AI towards the desired "universal intelligence". Anyway, Grok has already sparked a discussion about How should AI communicate? and who it is supposed to serve – and that in itself moves the field forward.
Sources used: ChatGPT (OpenAI) – information and comparison of general properties; xAI – official website and blog (news.x.ai)
x.ai
x.ai; Business Insider
businessinsider.com; DataCamp
datacamp.com; TechRadar
techradar.com; Reuters
reuters.com; DigitalTrends
digitaltrends.com; Techstrong.ai
techstrong.ai; PCMag
pcmag.com; Business Insider (Tom Carter).
businessinsider.com; Futurism
futurism.com. (See all citations above in the text)
