Elon Musk was one of many who signed for a 6 month pause letter on the development of AI but nevertheless launched a chatgpt competitor himself just a few days ago.
I see Grok as yet another competitor, alongside Bard and Claude, chatbots that are in a mad dash for users in this initial stage. The only difference is Grok was mostly trained on Twitter’s user data, which makes me pause on the accuracy of the data. Anyone can tweet anything on Twitter and the platform already suffers from major misinformation, while ChatGPT is mainly trained on published journals, websites and books.
Elon’s big push to release a bot of his own is fueled by his plan to monetize Twitter. After an unsuccessful attempt at getting his users to sign up for the blue check mark this is another ploy to increase paid users. Currently, the only upside he offers is that the data is recent and that it can answer more questions than the “woke” chatgpt. Adding this product also folds well into his plan of making X into a superapp, having already acquired a banking license for the platform with plans to launch livestreaming services.
However, Chatgpt’s seeming shortcoming, its cutoff date, actually ensures that the information it provides is based on data that has been vetted and validated up to that point. Real-time updates might introduce unverified or less reliable information.
Elon also fancies a different type of internet, one that is less moderate and more abrasive at times. His purchase of Twitter is an example. He believes in free speech in an absolute way and he doesn’t believe in the censorship of sensitive information or abrasive language. I predict Grok will echo that. We can already see from the screenshots he parades on his Twitter account that a significant amount of swearing is lauded, including posting a tweet of a screenshot of a user asking it how to make cocaine.
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