Follows "the truth"

Musk presents new version of his chatbot Grok

Grok 3 should "follow the truth", even if the results are not "politically correct", according to Musk.

(Bild: APA/AFP/Lionel BONAVENTURE)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has unveiled the next version of his company xAI's AI chatbot Grok in competition with chatGPT developer OpenAI. In a livestream, it was stated that Grok 3 had performed better in standardized tests than AI models from OpenAI and other competitors.

Access to Grok 3 will be staggered for users in the USA. Premium+ subscribers to Musk's X platform, who pay 22 dollars (21 euros) per month, will initially be given priority. However, Grok will not only be made available via X, but also via a smartphone app and the web (grok.com). For these access channels, xAI wants to offer a "Supergrok" subscription at a price of 30 US dollars per month.

Users from the European Union and Great Britain will not be able to use Grok 3 for the foreseeable future, as the service still has to be adapted to the data protection laws applicable in those countries, according to a statement.

During the Grok 3 demo in a livestream on X, the AI software programmed, among other things, a 3D model that uses planetary movements to show the best launch window for a mission to Mars. Musk then said that "if all goes well", his space travel company SpaceX wants to send a ship with humanoid robots from Tesla, the car manufacturer he runs, to Mars at the next favorable moment at the end of 2026.

However, the tech billionaire is known for missing deadlines he has set himself, sometimes by years - for example, in the case of Tesla's self-driving cars, which have been announced for almost a decade.

To train the Grok AI language model, xAI transformed a former Electrolux factory in Memphis into a gigantic data center in just 122 days, in which 100,000 high-performance chips from Nvidia were networked and put into operation. In a second construction phase, the computing capacity was doubled again in just 92 days. Musk claimed that Grok 3 was developed with ten times the computing power of its predecessor, Grok 2.

Big promises
Musk reiterated that Grok's mission is to "understand the universe" and that the software should "follow the truth", even if the results are not "politically correct". According to Musk, two variants of the new Grok-3 model can carefully think through problems, similar to ChatGPT o3-mini from OpenAI and the R1 from the Chinese AI company DeepSeek.

These so-called "reasoning models" try to check themselves before they output results. This should lead to better results that are also easier for users to understand.

Musk also announced that Grok 3 will soon have an AI voice. And his company plans to release the previous version, Grok 2, as an open source model in the coming months, just as Meta does with its models, for example.

Conflict with OpenAI
The launch of Grok 3 is further fueling competition among providers of AI solutions. In particular, Musk is feuding with OpenAI boss Sam Altman. Musk, together with several investors, had made a 97.4 billion dollar offer to take over the non-profit organization that controls OpenAI. The board of directors of the AI start-up rejected it unanimously.

The tech billionaire is also taking legal action to prevent the transformation of OpenAI into a profit-oriented company. He had once co-founded OpenAI, but later left the company. OpenAI accuses him of simply wanting to thwart a competitor.