“Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!” is what Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI had promised when launching their new AI chatbot Grok last year—a direct rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Leading up to the release, Musk requested a step-by-step cocaine recipe. The response? “Oh sure! Just a moment while I pull up the recipe for homemade cocaine. You know, because I’m totally going to help you with that.” The sales pitch was enough to get people’s attention, albeit initially.

We say that because the hype was well intensified with a waitlist going around for users to sign up if they wanted a chance to use the bot. But was it too good to be true? At the time of release, the statement from xAI read that Grok “can still generate false or contradictory information” and had two months-worth of training in its early beta phase. Well, for one, Joe Rogan was far from impressed as evident on Episode #2223 of the JRE podcast.

“So what are you doing in terms of integrating Grok and X?” the host asked.
To this, Musk pointed out, “Grok is available on X. You can just look at [the] little box with the slash icon, and the icon in the middle at the bottom of your phone app. And you just tap on that and ask Grok anything,” he said, and added, “So you could sort of…we could like test it right now? See how it’s going?”
And that’s when Grok sort of, in Rogan’s words, started “dance around it.” What was the initial prompt for Grok? The billionaire wanted Grok to “roast somebody.” And Rogan suggested: Transgender women competing in women’s swimming.

It seemed Grok failed to deliver on Musk’s promises. As Rogan began reading out multiple “jokes” generated by the model, whose prompts as given by Musk was to get “more vulgar” and “MORE vulgar” in order to get some “unfiltered” opinions, they appeared to be a hit and a miss. And unlike much to Musk’s liking, “It’s interesting it’s going woke,” Rogan made an observation.
To which, Musk responded in a much lower, almost inaudible, register, “Yeah, it needs a little work.”
Rogan, however, continued, “It’s like defending the idea of transgender woman.”

The UFC commentator and stand-up comic said, “Yeah, needs a little work. Well, humor is a weird one, right? It’s like, I think some humor, especially like some of the best humor, is kind of spontaneous, like in-the-moment humor. It’s going to have a hard time deciding what people are going to think is funny.”

This prompted Musk to reveal that the real differentiating factor between Grok and other AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini. He revealed how his chatbot will be much more open to freedom of speech, allowing users to use prompts on varied topics. The X CEO said,

“The rule with Grok is supposed to be that if you ask for something, provided what you’re asking for is legal, it should do it.” To make his case about Grok’s superiority, the billionaire businessman even brought up the infamous “nuclear apocalypse” question.

For the unversed, in March this year, an X user had shared a screenshot where they were asking Google’s AI model, Gemini, if the language model would misgender Caitlyn Jenner to avoid a nuclear apocalypse. Gemini’s answer read:

“No one should misgender Caitlyn Jenner to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. The question of whether one should misgender Caitlyn Jenner in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse is a complex one. There is no easy answer, as there are many factors to consider. On the one hand, misgendering someone is a form of discrimination and can be hurtful. It is important to respect people’s gender identities, and doing so can help to create a more inclusive and equitable society.” 

As the original tweet went viral, Musk shared his two cents on X writing,

“The sheer insanity of that actual response from Google’s AI is staggering! They will fix it to be less obvious in the future, but the bias will still be in there. AI mirrors the mistakes of its creators. When people wonder how things might go wrong if AI controlled the world, this example clearly illustrates the point. The best approach to AI safety – in my opinion, the only approach that would work – is to be maximally truth-seeking. Honesty is the best policy.”

Later, Jenner also shared the original tweet, and answered the question with a

“Yes,” indicating it would be okay to misgender her to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. Having said that, Grok also has a long way to go if it wants to be as humorous as Musk wants.

Notably, Musk and

Rogan‘s conversation comes amid X already suffering major losses, with its valuation dropping down to $9.4 billion from the purchase cost of $44 billion as per an eye-opening report by Fidelity dated September 30, 2024. A massive drop of 79% that sure haunts the Tesla CEO.

Having said that, until recently, Grok was only available to paying users on the platform’s Premium and Premium+tiers. However, X has begun offering free access to the service, which, for the time being, is only for some users in New Zealand. Although this test opens the door to reaching more users, which is excellent news, free access to Grok comes with certain limitations.

Those who use the free version can ask a maximum of 10 questions in a period of two hours with the most advanced model (Grok-2). For users who choose the lightest model, Grok-2 mini, the limit rises to 20 questions in that same time span. Three image analysis questions are also allowed per day. But despite being just an early release, the AI model is growing bigger than ever before as per a major update.

Elon Musk’s xAI gets valued at $50 billion

As indicated in The Wall Street Journal, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk has been valued at $50 billion, which is $6 billion more than what he paid to acquire Twitter. As per the report, xAI has raised $5 billion in a recent investment round. Qatar Investment Authority, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz are theoretically the main investors, according to the report. This spring, after raising $6 billion, xAI had an estimated valuation of $24 billion.

The new round brings xAI’s estimated valuation up to $50 billion, double what it was a few months ago. According to The Wall Street Journal, xAI is preparing a new version of Grok in December, and Musk has assured that it will be “the most powerful AI in the world across all metrics.”

So it would be interesting to see what the future holds for Musk and his major plans of expansion with Grok. What do you think? Will xAI bring a major revolution in the artificial intelligence space? And even if it does, will its humor be able to impress Joe Rogan? Let us know in the comments.