Elon Musk's xAI launches Grok 2 AI chatbot for Apple users, no more X subscription needed

Grok now has various features such as image generation and fact-checking, coming with a tiered subscription model, unlocking advanced features for paying users

Published on: Jan 14, 2025, 15:45:18 IST

By HT News Desk | Edited by Abhyjith K. Ashokan

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Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) startup has launched Grok 2, the second version of its AI-powered assistant as a standalone app in for iOS.

This photograph taken on January 13, 2025 in Toulouse shows screens displaying the logo of Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, the American company specializing in artificial intelligence and it's founder South African businessman Elon Musk. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP)

It now has various features such as image generation and fact-checking, coming with a tiered subscription model which unlocks advanced features for paying users.

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Grok 2 now also allows users to access it without requiring an X (Formerly Twitter) subscription, indicating it shifting away from the original plan of being integrated within the social media platform.

Users can now sign in using their email, Apple ID, or other supported login options.

The move is aimed at competing with rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Meta AI, Claude.ai, and so on.

Grok was initially launched in November 2023 as a chatbot with a distinctive personality to offer sarcastic and humorous experiences.

It was initially available only for X subscribers. However, a free version was announced in December 2024 with limitations such as only being able to perform 10 inquiries daily.

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What Grok can do

1) Image generation: Grok can create some of the most hyperrealistic images due to its integration with FLUX, an open-source AI image generator. However, its abilities are controlled to prevent it from generating explicit content.

2) Real-time search: Grok AI has access to real-time information on X which in itself is a huge database, being one of the top news sources. It can also look up a wide range of products and services

3) Brainstorm: Grok can now generate ideas and aid in creativity.

4) Regular and Fun mode: Regular mode elicits straightforward answers while fun mode, which was added in March 2024 adds a layer of sarcasm and humour to the responses.

5) Fact-checking and summarising: Grok can be used to fact-check tweets and summarise news simply with the user pasting a URL and prompting it.

6) Next-Token Prediction: Grok uses a next-token prediction model which helps it to anticipate and generate the most likely response in conversations.

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HT News Desk
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