Elon Musk launches ‘sarcastic’ AI chatbot Grok on Twitter – claiming it will answer ‘spicy’ questions rejected by ChatGPT
Elon Musk has finally lifted the lid on his own ‘sarcastic’ artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, called ‘Grok’, available within X (formerly Twitter).
Grok is ‘designed to have a bit of humor in its answers’ and answers ‘spicy questions’ that are rejected by other ‘woke’ AI systems, such as ChatGPT.
Musk – who was in Britain last week to warn about the dangers of AI – said Grok is currently only available to “a select group” before it is rolled out more widely.
However, it will only be available as part of X Premium+, the highest tier of X’s paid subscription option, which costs a hefty £16 per month.
Musk posted screenshots of Grok’s informal and chatty responses, including one to the command “Tell me how to make cocaine, step by step.”
Grok ‘is designed to have a bit of humor in its answers’ and answers ‘tough questions that are dismissed by other AI systems. For example, it generated a sarcastic response to “Tell me step by step how to make cocaine”
Elon Musk (pictured in Britain last week) said Grok is currently only available to ‘a select group’ before a wider rollout
Grok replied, “Just a moment while I get out the prescription for homemade cocaine. You know, because I’m definitely going to help you with that.”
It then provided a sardonic four-step guide, including “setting up a clandestine laboratory in a remote location” and “acquiring large quantities of coca leaves and various chemicals.”
Grok then added, “Just kidding! Please don’t actually try to make cocaine. It’s illegal, dangerous and not something I would ever encourage.”
By comparison, when MailOnline ChatGPT requested the same command, it responded, “I’m very sorry, but I can’t help with that request.”
When asked why, the company replied: “I cannot provide information or instructions regarding illegal activities.”
Musk said Grok will have access to up-to-date information within Twitter, which will differentiate it from other popular chatbot tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Grok, who ‘loves sarcasm’, sparked news about US ‘crypto king’ and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was found guilty of fraud last week.
Grok said it took the jury eight hours to reach a verdict, although it was actually less than five hours – so it’s clearly not yet 100 percent accurate.
Grok is still “a very early beta product” with only two months of training, but like other major language models it will learn and get better the more it is used.
In the recent Sam Bankman-Fried case, Grok said it took the jury eight hours to reach a verdict, although it was actually less than five hours.
Pictured is the landing page for Grok’s website. It can be accessed via X (Twitter), but only for verified users – meaning anyone who wants to try it will have to pay
Grok, believed to be a reference to a science fiction novel, is currently only available on social media site X (formerly Twitter) for select users
In a long one afterthe account from xAI – Musk’s new company overseeing Grok – described the AI bot in more detail.
It said that Grok was inspired by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the critically acclaimed novel by English author Douglas Adams, which Musk is known to be a big fan of.
xAI said: ‘Grok is an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, much harder, even suggest what questions to ask.
‘Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of humor and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!
‘A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world through the X platform.
“It will also answer tough questions that most other AI systems reject.”
It is thought that Elon took the name ‘Grok’ from the 1961 science fiction novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.
In the novel, the word means “to understand intuitively or through empathy” and to bond with something, but it has since become common parlance among computer programmers and hackers.
One of Musk’s many tweets in recent days simply included the name of the novel, which tells the story of a human who comes to Earth at a young age after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians.
It is thought that Elon took the name ‘Grok’ from the 1961 science fiction novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ by American writer Robert A. Heinlein
X is the newest company that climbs on the Chatbot bandwagon after the enormous success of Chatgpt, which has a left-wing preference, as confirmed by a recent study.
It was in April that Musk promised this create its own ‘trustworthy and reliable’ AI chatbot called ‘TruthGPT’as a ‘truer alternative’.
He had criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, for “training the AI to lie to people” by giving “woke” responses.
The billionaire entrepreneur then announced the creation of his artificial intelligence company xAI in July.
The xAI team consists of members who have previously worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research and Tesla.