Palo Alto, California – Tesla CEO Elon Musk has introduced a new artificial intelligence chatbot called Grok, which he claims is inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Musk, who recently expressed concerns about the potential dangers of AI, announced that Grok will be available to premium subscribers on his company’s X platform after it undergoes testing. Notably, Grok has access to user posts on X and is designed to respond with sarcasm. Musk shared an example of the chatbot’s playful tone in a screenshot where it jokingly provided steps to make cocaine before clarifying that it was illegal and dangerous.

Although Grok is currently only in early testing and not accessible to the general public, Musk plans to eventually release it to subscribers of X’s top-tier subscription service, Premium+. The chatbot, created by Musk’s new AI company xAI, was described by the xAI team as a model based on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, designed to answer questions and suggest new ones. It possesses wit and a rebellious streak, as indicated by the xAI team’s blog post.

Grok-1, the language model powering Grok, has already surpassed the performance of GPT-3.5, the model used in the freely available version of ChatGPT, in specific benchmarks. However, it still falls short of the most powerful ChatGPT model, GPT-4. Grok is currently being offered to a limited number of users in the US as part of an early access program. xAI plans to roll out new capabilities and features in the coming months.

Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, but has distanced himself from it since 2018. In recent years, he has expressed concerns about the rapid development of AI systems and called for a temporary pause. However, Musk now believes that a pause is no longer realistic and has founded xAI to develop AI systems in a responsible manner.

During a recent AI safety summit, Musk reiterated his belief that AI poses a significant threat to humanity, echoing the concerns of other experts and tech executives. He warned that AI could surpass human intelligence and ultimately replace all human jobs. Despite these concerns, he remains committed to developing AI technology in a responsible and beneficial way.

In conclusion, Elon Musk has unveiled an AI chatbot named Grok, inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Grok is currently undergoing testing and will eventually be available to premium subscribers on the X platform. While Grok has access to user posts and responds with sarcasm, it is not accessible to the general public yet. Musk’s new AI company, xAI, developed Grok-1, which has surpassed the performance of ChatGPT’s previous model but falls short of the most powerful ChatGPT model. Musk has expressed concerns about AI in the past and has now established xAI to develop AI systems responsibly.