Elon Musk Will Open-Source AI Tool Grok This Week

Elon Musk says he will open-source his AI company X.AI’s generative chatbot, Grok, sometime this week. The billionaire X.AI, Tesla, and SpaceX CEO shared the news early Monday morning on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that he owns.

Responding to one comment calling for the Sam Altman-led firm OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, to do the same, Musk argued: “OpenAI is a lie.”

Musk’s decision to open-source Grok, which is known for its more quirky personality compared to other generative AI chatbots, comes shortly after Musk launched a lawsuit against OpenAI for alleged breach of contract by betraying its original nonprofit mission and closing off its tech findings from the public. Musk has previously argued that keeping an AI model open is important so that its findings can benefit all of humanity instead of a single firm’s bottom line.

OpenAI responded to the suit by publishing a number of private emails between Musk and the AI firm’s leaders, suggesting Musk was seeking full control over OpenAI and thought it should merge with Tesla to ensure substantial long-term funding.

According to X.AI’s website, Grok is being developed by a team of 16 including Musk. The startup is continuing to update Grok, and is currently hiring for a number of different engineering roles. Last week, the X.AI team announced that Grok is now purportedly three times faster than before. In December, Grok became available to Twitter users who pay for the platform’s “Premium+” subscription option. Grok can be accessed via the forward slash icon on Twitter’s web browser, iOS, and Android versions.

Musk helped start OpenAI back in 2015 and left its board in 2018, reportedly investing less than $45 million in the AI firm. A year ago, Musk started X.AI. Since then, Altman and Musk have traded blows online over their respective AI tools. Musk previously criticized ChatGPT for a perceived lack of personality, and Altman dissed Grok for having “cringey boomer humor in a sort of awkward shock-to-get-laughs kind of way.”