Elon Musk opens Grok AI access to all on X: What it is and how it works

For free-tier users on X, Grok only allows 10 text prompts every two hours and up to three image generations at a time

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has made its Grok AI chatbot available to free-tier users on X (formerly Twitter). All users, including those without an active subscription, can now access the chatbot to generate text and images, albeit with usage limitations. Here is all you need to know about it:

 

Grok AI: What it is

 

Grok is an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI and launched in November 2023. Powered by the Grok 2 AI model introduced in August, the chatbot can respond to text prompts, hold conversations, and generate images. In October, the platform added image-understanding capabilities, enabling users to upload images and ask related questions.

 

Grok AI: Availability

 

Grok AI is accessible through a dedicated section on X via the mobile app and web platform. The interface allows users to view chat history and generated images in a gallery for easy access.

 

For free-tier users, Grok AI permits 10 text prompts every two hours and up to three image generations. Once the limit is reached, users must either subscribe to a premium plan or wait for the cooldown period to expire.

 

Grok AI: New image generation model

 

Currently, the free version uses the Grok 2 AI model combined with the FLUX text-to-image model for image generation. According to The Verge, xAI has also introduced a new “Aurora” image model, available in beta for select users under the “Grok 2 + Aurora beta” option. The Aurora model generates more photorealistic images with minimal restrictions, similar to the FLUX model, but remains subject to usage limits for free-tier users.

 

Grok AI: What’s coming next

 

Elon Musk has confirmed that xAI is developing document-understanding capabilities for Grok, which will allow the chatbot to extract information from files like PDFs and Word documents. Additionally, xAI is reportedly working on a standalone Grok AI app to compete with mobile platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini.