Elon Musk’s xAI testing free version of chatbot Grok on X

xAI, founded by Elon Musk, is reportedly piloting a free trial of its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, Grok. As per a report by US publication TechCrunch, users on social media platform X have discovered the free version is accessible in specific regions, including New Zealand.

Currently, Grok AI is exclusive to X Premium and Premium Plus subscribers. Under this, users can make up to 10 queries every two hours with the Grok-2 AI model, and up to 20 queries every two hours with the Grok-2 mini model.

Further, the chatbot introduces a feature that allows users to analyse images, with a restriction of three queries per day.


xAI has also announced plans to recruit bilingual tutors in Hindi and English in India, offering an hourly rate between $35 and $65 (around Rs 2,950-5,500) per hour, as per a News18 report.

xAI’s competitors

xAI and its Grok chatbot face fierce competition from other large AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot.

ChatGPT by Open AI- Open AI’s valuation has jumped to $157 billion from $14 billion in 2021, ET reported on November 9. Last month, the ChatGPT maker closed a $6.6-billion funding round, which could value the company at $157 billion, as per a Reuters report.

Claude by Anthropic - Anthropic, a startup backed by Google and Amazon, in March this year, revealed a suite of artificial intelligence models known as Claude 3. TechCrunch reported in August that Claude crossed $1 million in gross mobile app revenue across iOS and Android and was ranked 95th in the Productivity category by downloads and 68th in that category by revenue.

Gemini by Google - Google CEO Sundar Pichai has confirmed that the company is working on the third generation of the Gemini AI model at the earnings call post its Q3 2024 results announcement.

Perplexity- Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI has begun fundraising talks in which it is looking to more than double its valuation to $8 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported in October. It has told investors it is looking to raise around $500 million in the new funding round.

Copilot by Microsoft- Microsoft posted revenues of $61.9 billion and net income of $21.9 billion for the FY24 third quarter that ended on March 31. The company incurred capital expenditure worth $14 billion directed towards demand for cloud services as well as to scale up its AI infrastructure.

The Wall Street Journal reported on October 29 that xAI is in talks with investors for a funding round that would value it around $40 billion.

Following Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections, Musk has been in the news consistently. Musk also highlighted a 15.5% increase in new user sign-ups on X, with an estimated 43% surge in sign-ups during the US election vote count.