X will open access to AI chatbot Grok for free users

Until now, social network X, owned by Elon Musk, only provided access to its AI-powered chatbot Grok through a paid subscription. Grok was created by xAI, another of Musk’s companies. Now the platform appears to be preparing to open up the chatbot to all users, at least according to several researchers over the past two days.

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TechCrunch has confirmed that social network X has begun testing access to Grok for free users in New Zealand. To use Grok for free, a user account must be in existence for at least seven days and must have a phone number associated with it.

Image source: TechCrunch

According to Platform X user Swak, testing is currently limited to ten requests over two hours for the Grok-2, twenty requests over two hours for the Grok-2 mini, and the ability to analyze three images per day.

XAI launched Grok-2 in August, providing image generation capabilities using the FLUX.1 model from Black Forest Labs. At the end of October, Grok-2 learned to analyze and “understand” images.

Currently, all these features are available only to users of Premium and Premium+ tariff plans. By opening Grok to free users, xAI may be looking to expand its user base and get more feedback for its products. This will increase Grok’s competitiveness in a field dominated by models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that xAI was in talks to raise several billion dollars in additional funding. The company’s market valuation today is $40 billion.