Musk to integrate xAI startup with social media platform X

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI will be integrated into his social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, Musk said on Sunday.

The move comes some six months after Musk was one of the signatories of a call to suspend the development of artificial intelligence for six months. However, his own AI company xAI was founded around the same time.

Meanwhile, xAI released its first AI model, a bot named Grok, after making it available to all X Premium+ subscribers on Friday.

"A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems," the xAI team announced on X.

Grok is also designed to answer questions "with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don't use it if you hate humor," the team said.

X, which Musk owns, is separate from xAI, but the companies work closely together. xAI also works with his electric car maker Tesla and other companies.

Who can use Grok?

Grok is initially only available for some users in the United States. As a prerequisite, they must be subscription customers of Musk's social media platform X, in the most expensive tier, which costs $16 (€14.90) per month in the US and €19 per month in Germany.

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which has created a frenzy for generative AI technology around the world, but stepped down from the board in 2018.

Musk has been warning for years that artificial intelligence could be dangerous for humanity. In the spring, he was one of the signatories of an open letter calling for the development of software with AI to be paused for six months in order to create a regulatory framework during this time.

Last week Musk told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak he thought AI was "the most disruptive force in history." The technology will be able to "do everything" and make employment as we know it today a thing of the past, Musk speculated at the first global AI Safety Summit, in Bletchley Park, England.